Somalia’s government and Al-Shabaab militants have issued sharply conflicting accounts of deadly fighting near the southern city of Leego, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy losses during a battle on Monday.
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The Somali defence ministry said on Tuesday that federal troops had killed 75 militants and wounded 56 others. The Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group claimed it had killed 321 government soldiers during an attack on Turkish-trained troops and an allied militia.
Neither account could be independently verified, leaving the scale of the casualties unclear.
The fighting took place in the Lower Shabelle region, where the government is battling an insurgency that has endured for two decades despite a major international effort to defeat it.
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Conflicting accounts of the battle
Al-Shabaab said it launched its attack on Monday afternoon, describing a three-hour ambush in which its fighters also captured prisoners, weapons and vehicles.
The defence ministry presented the fighting as an offensive against militant positions.
“The Somali National Army, conducting Operation Banooda, launched a major assault lasting several hours on 26 October against Al-Shabaab positions in Jameeca,” it said in a statement.
The government confirmed that militants had used vehicles packed with explosives during the attack and acknowledged damage to military equipment.
“The attack damaged some military vehicles,” the ministry said.
Its statement did not provide a toll for government forces or confirm Al-Shabaab’s claims to have taken prisoners and seized equipment.
Local media platform Baidoa Online reported that the government had called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss what it described as “heavy casualties and substantial military equipment losses” during the fighting near Leego.
That report added to indications of a significant confrontation, although the competing claims offered no independently verified picture of how the battle unfolded or which side suffered the greater losses.
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Pressure on international support
The clashes come as Somalia’s government faces uncertainty over international backing for its campaign against Al-Shabaab, which continues to control large areas of central Somalia.
Turkey has emerged as a key supporter of the federal government, including through the training of Somali troops. Its role has become increasingly important as the US and other major donors pull back from supporting the counter-insurgency effort.
Washington has stopped funding the United Nations logistics mission that supplies combat operations in Somalia – a vital part of the international support underpinning the campaign.
The US has cited the government’s failure to make progress in uniting the country and confronting the insurgent threat as its reason for ending that funding.
The withdrawal adds pressure on Somali forces and their partners as they seek to sustain operations against a group that remains capable of mounting major attacks.
(with newswires)