Several al-Shabab militants killed in AU operation in Somalia

Australian News.Net
Thursday 28th July, 2011

Under intense pressure over its response to the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa, African Union troops conducted a military operation against Somali militants Thursday.

The African Union has been accused of failing to act quickly and broadly to protect the people of Somalia from the worst drought in the region in 60 years.

Several African nations have been impacted, but Somalia is suffering the worst, with no functional national government and intense under-development.

Some 2.3 million people in the country’s two UN-declared famine zones are in need of food aid, while hundreds of thousands have undertaken long journeys on foot to reach refugee camps on the border with Kenya and Ethiopia and in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu.

African Union forces supporting Somalia’s short-handed and badly equipped military on Thursday announced that they had conducted an offensive operation against al-Shabab militants.

The operation was conducted to ensure better security for aid workers trying to deliver food to famine-struck populations in the interior of the country.

“This action will further increase security ... and ensure that aid agencies can continue to operate to get vital supplies to internally displaced,” Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda said Thursday, describing the action as a “short tactical offensive operation”.

The al-Qaeda-backed al-Shabab militant group controls vast areas of Somalia outside the capital and has in recent days begun to kill fathers trying to lead their families out of the famine zone to refugee camps.

The militant group is reportedly concerned about the undermining affect the famine is having on its authority. For this reason, it has already banned aid workers from entering the famine zone, accusing the groups of being anti-Islam and pro-Western.

Muslim aid groups in Somalia have condemned the views of al-Shabab and have themselves been banned by the extremist militant group.

However, most aid agencies continue to deliver goods to the Somali interior despite the ban and extreme danger involved. The World Food Program on Thursday delivered 10 tons of peanut butter paste to Mogadishu for distribution in the country, further airlifts are planned in coming weeks.

David Orr, a spokesman for the World Food Programme, said the fighting has not interrupted his organization's efforts to get aid into the area.

In Thursday’s offensive by African Union forces, 15 al-Shabab militants were killed. The operation came just hours after a Kenyan policeman was killed on the border with Somalia by a bomb explosion, four others were injured in that attack.

Kenyan authorities say the attack was retribution by al-Shabab for trying to help Somali’s fleeing the famine.

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