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The
government, backed by AU troops and clan militias, said it has
killed around 700 members of al Shabaab and recaptured scores of
settlements as part of a months-long campaign to loosen the al
Qaeda-linked group's control over large swathes of the country.
Mahamud Hasan Mahamud, the mayor of Adan Yabal in Middle
Shabelle region, said the army and militias had taken control of
the town and the surrounding district of the same name without
encountering resistance on Monday.
"This district of Adan Yabal was very important for al Shabaab
because it is the heart that connects the central regions and
the south of Somalia. It was also their main base from which
they manage the central regions," Mahamud told Reuters late on
Monday.
He said the troops were sweeping the town, which is around 240km
(150 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu, for mines.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said al Shabaab's fighters had
taken residents of the town as human shields and destroyed
infrastructure.
"They took with them pumps of the wells and some residents as
(human) shields for fear of being bombed," he said in a
televised address after the town's capture.
Al Shabaab's spokespeople were not immediately reachable to
comment on the town's capture and the accusations of holding
residents as human shields.
The head of the AU mission in Somalia, Mohammed El-Amine Souef,
described the town as a training ground for al Shabaab, and said
the broader campaign was delivering "destructive and decisive"
blows against the group.
Al Shabaab frequently abandons areas before army offensives, but
the government often fails to hold recaptured territory,
analysts say, allowing the militants to return.
"When they entered the town, al Shabaab were not there," Absher
Mudey, a shop owner in Adan Yabal, told Reuters by telephone.
"Most of the people fled because they were afraid that fighting
would break out."
(Reporting by Abdiqani Hassan and Abdi Sheikh; Writing by George
Obulutsa and Hereward Holland; Editing by Gareth Jones and
Raissa Kasolowsky)
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