United States drone strike kills over 150 al-Shabab militants

Mar 08, 2016, 16:15

The US has carried out an airstrike in Somalia, killing more than 150 people the Pentagon said were fighters with the al Qaida-linked Islamist group al-Shabaab.

Spokesman Jeff Davis earlier told reporters that the strike killed some 150 militants, but a Pentagon statement did not confirm the number killed and said the results of the strike were still being assessed. Davis said it appeared that the training was about to come to an end, and the operational phase of a suspected attack was about to start. He insisted that avoiding civilian casualties is a "very very high priority, both for moral reasons but also because extremist organizations like al-Shabab would just use the death of innocent civilians to try to recruit additional members and whip up additional anti-U.S. sentiment".

The militants were reportedly preparing to launch a large-scale attack, likely against African or USA personnel.

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Warplanes and unmanned drones were used in the strike, about 120 miles (195 kilometers) north of Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab maintains its determination to establish its rule over Somalia, hence its resilience and increasingly sophisticated attacks.

On January 15, Shebab fighters overran a military outpost in El-Adde, southern Somalia, manned by up to 200 Kenyan soldiers deployed as part of the African Union peace-enforcement mission, AMISOM.

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"There will obviously be some limitations on where we can be transparent, given a variety of sensitivities, including diplomatic", White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. His successor Ahmed Godane was killed in a 2014 strike. AMISOM includes more than 20,000 troops from about a dozen countries, though mostly from Kenya and Ethiopia.

The group has said it carried out a string of recent attacks including a twin bombing at a busy restaurant in the Somali city of Baidoa last month.

Al-Shabab was once strong, then greatly weakened and now seems to be somewhere in between, while analysts say it competes with the Islamic State for recruits and tries to show - in the deadliest way - that it is still relevant.

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Around the time that the United States drone strike was announced on Monday, Australia's navy said it had seized a huge cache of weapons near the coast of Oman from a fishing boat bound for Somalia.