It was “a historic victory,” hailed Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, announcing on Monday January 16 the resumption of the “strategic” port of Harardhere, which Islamist extremists Al-Shabaab had held since 2010. “2023 will be the year of freedom and eradication of Al-Shabaab and our whole country will be liberated,” he added in a press release.
Harardhere is 500 kilometers north of the capital Mogadishu. According to Hussein Ahmed, the post minister present at the front, the jihadists left the city before the arrival of government forces, who recaptured them without a fight. The village of Galcad, which like Harardhere is in Galmudug state, was also taken over Monday in the same circumstances, sources close to the security services have told us.
A “total war”
Al-Shabaab, which took up arms in 2007, was driven out of the country’s main cities in 2011 and 2012 but remains firmly established in large rural areas. President Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud, who returned to power in May 2022, has promised to wage a “total war” against them, with the support of local militias who have rebelled against them.
Somalia’s President Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud, who vowed to wage a “total war” against al-Shabaab extremists at Banadir Stadium in Mogadishu on January 12, 2023. FARAH ABDI WARSAMEH / AP
The offensive, backed by the African Union forces in Somalia (Atmis) and the US Air Force, enabled much of the interior to be retaken, but the Khabab, posing as al-Qaeda, remain capable of carrying out very deadly attacks , like those that killed nineteen people in Mahas (center) in early January. On October 29, two car bombs killed 121 people in Mogadishu, an unprecedented number in that Horn of Africa country also hit by a historic drought.
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