Al-Shabab leader killed in Somalia
Rival group denies assassinating group’s commander in port city of Kismayo.
Al-Shabab and Hizbul-Islam, another group fighting against the government, have been battling alongside each other in the capital, Mogadishu, but in the south they have been at loggerheads for months.
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Hizbul-Islam denied having a hand in the killing, but said it would step up attacks on Dhobley after a raid on Friday night in which it said it killed a number of al-Shabaab militants.
The two groups have fought for control of Kismayo, the main port in southern Somalia, as well as Dhobley on the main road linking the port to Kenya.
“We have already arrested several suspects and we should bring them to the justice soon,” Sheikh Abukar Ali Adan, al-Shabab’s chairman in the area, told a news conference in Kismayo on Saturday.
Somalia has had no effective government for 19 years and Western nations and neighbours say the anarchic country is used as a shelter by fighters planning attacks in east Africa and further afield.
The US state department says al-Shabab militants have links to al-Qaeda.
At least 21,000 Somalis have been killed in violence since the start of 2007, 1.5 million have been uprooted from their homes and nearly half a million are sheltering in other countries in the region