Al-Shabaab encircles key Somali town after taking villages

Local residents told Keydmedia English that heavily Al-Shabaab fighters in battle-wagons were amassing on the outskirts of Wasil town, causing mass displacement.

News Keydmedia Online
31 October 2021

MOGADISHU, Somalia - The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab group has begun encircling Wasil, a strategic town in central Somalia, prompting allied to pull out of their military bases.

The development comes in the wake of the SNA exit from Amara, Ba’adweyn, and Qay’ad in the southern Mudug region, where the troops battled Al-Shabaab for months this year.

Local residents told Keydmedia English that heavily Al-Shabaab fighters in battle-wagons were amassing on the outskirts of Wasil town, causing mass displacement and panic.

Galmudug state Darwish forces with the support of armed militia are reportedly dug trenches into the ground to defend their town from the imminent Al-Shabaab attack.

Al-Shabaab has prepared nearly 500 combatants to execute the assault to retake Wasil from the regional troops, according to a villager in nearby Shabellow locality who spoke to KON.

In June this year, Al-Shabaab managed to overrun key military bases in the city, killing soldiers and wounded many others, one of the deadliest terrorist raids on the army this year.

The lethal ambush prompted a joint two-month offensive by SNA and Galmudug troops which failed to flush out the terrorists from the entire Mudug region in central Somalia.

KEYDMEDIA English