Puntland State forces eliminate ISIS cell behind fatal landmine attack on General Qalyare

Puntland State says it killed ISIS cell blamed for landmine that slain senior commander

GAROWE, Somalia — Puntland State’s regional forces say they killed seven Islamic State fighters and captured one more in a mountain sweep on Sunday, striking a cell accused of planting the landmine that killed Brig. Gen. Qalyare, one of the region’s most senior officers, last week.

The operation unfolded in the Dhasan area of the Cal Miskaad range, a jagged spine of rock and scrubland along Somalia’s northeast. In a brief statement, commanders of “Operation Hillaac” — Somali for “lightning” — said the raid tracked the suspects dozens of kilometers through the hills before closing in on their camp.

Independent sources told reporters that Puntland State lost one soldier in the fighting and that three others were wounded. Local authorities said the bodies of the dead militants would be presented publicly on Monday — a grim, if familiar, attempt to signal progress in a war fought in remote valleys and along poorly marked dirt roads.

The mountain raid

Gen. Mahmoud Faadhig, the spokesman for the Hillaac campaign, said the group was found about 60 kilometers from the site where Gen. Qalyare died. “It was an intense battle,” he said, adding that the ISIS cell was “destroyed” and that three suspected fighters fled in the confusion. Puntland State’s forces, he said, are pursuing them across the range.

Faadhig also warned that improvised landmines remain one of the group’s signature weapons. “They rely on mines,” he said in remarks relayed by local media, describing roadside devices and pressure-activated charges that have menaced soldiers and herders alike. For officers in the northeast, the challenge is grim arithmetic: a handful of fighters, a sack of fertilizer, and a path well traveled can halt an entire unit.

Who was Brig. Gen. Qalyare?

Gen. Qalyare, the commander of the 2nd Brigade of Puntland State’s Dervish forces, died last week when a landmine detonated during an ongoing sweep through the mountains. He was a veteran of the region’s long anti-insurgent campaigns. The Dervish name harks back to the early 20th-century movement that defied colonial rule in Somalia — a reminder of how deeply military tradition runs in the region’s identity.

His death reverberated beyond the barracks. In villages along the foothills, elders spoke of a commander known for spending nights in wind-battered forward posts. “He didn’t lead from offices,” a shopkeeper in Bosaso said by phone. “He was always in the field.” For Puntland State’s rank and file, Sunday’s raid was as much about retribution as security — a message that attacks on senior officers will not go unanswered.

Why the Cal Miskaad mountains matter

Cal Miskaad — part of the larger Golis range — has long been a sanctuary for armed groups. The ridgelines are cut with caves and goat paths; the brush is thorny, the rocks treacherous. State control thins out with altitude. It is here that the Islamic State’s small Somalia wing, which surfaced publicly around 2015, dug in. The group is far smaller than the al-Qaeda-aligned al-Shabaab, but it has proved durable in the northeast, drawing on extortion networks along the coast and skills learned from years of insurgency in the Horn of Africa.

Security officials say ISIS’s footprint in Somalia is measured in the low hundreds — a fraction of al-Shabaab’s manpower — yet the group’s tactics are outsized in impact. They favor mines, targeted assassinations, and sporadic ambushes on security convoys. The terrain magnifies their effect. A single device on a narrow track can crumple an armored pickup and stall a patrol for hours, giving fighters time to melt into ravines that can be traversed quickly only by people who know each bend of the land.

A familiar, evolving threat

Across the Horn and the Sahel, insurgents have learned to stretch their reach with improvised explosives. Somalia is no exception. IED incidents have risen and fallen in waves over the years, but their lethality remains steady. They are cheap, brutally efficient, and hard to detect in a landscape without consistent road maintenance or sophisticated scanning equipment. Demining organizations have warned that even when conflict shifts, mines and booby traps linger, creating deadly hazards for nomadic families and children gathering firewood.

In Puntland State, the ISIS presence adds another layer to a crowded security map. Al-Shabaab still carries out attacks nationwide, while the federal government in Mogadishu pushes offensives in central Somalia alongside allied clan militias. The African Union’s peacekeepers are drawing down under a timetable to transfer security responsibilities to Somali forces. In this patchwork, Puntland State’s government — often at political odds with the federal center — maintains its own campaigns. When a senior officer dies, it stirs questions about coordination, resourcing, and how long local units can keep pressure on remote cells without broader support.

There is also a rivalry at play. ISIS and al-Shabaab have occasionally fought each other in Somalia, competing for recruits, money, and influence. For communities caught in between, the brand matters less than the effect: fear, extortion, and the uncertainty that comes with a roadside crater that wasn’t there yesterday.

What we know — and what to watch

• Seven suspected ISIS members were killed and one captured in Sunday’s raid, according to Puntland State’s Operation Hillaac.
• One Puntland State soldier was killed and three were wounded, independent sources said.
• Three militants escaped; security forces say the manhunt continues in the Cal Miskaad range.
• Officials tied the cell to the landmine attack that killed Brig. Gen. Qalyare last week.

Expect more patrols, and possibly more skirmishes, in the days ahead. In counterinsurgency, pressure is the strategy and visibility is part of the message. The planned display of the bodies is meant to telegraph momentum. But the math of these campaigns is unforgiving: clearing is easier than holding, and mines can be laid by a handful of men in an afternoon.

For Puntland State’s leaders, the questions are both tactical and strategic. Can they sustain a chase through mountains where supply lines are a ridge too long? Will local intelligence — the tips from herders and traders — continue to flow if civilians fear reprisals? And in a year when Somalia’s security responsibilities are shifting, what kind of help will arrive, and from whom?

On Sunday, though, the message from Garowe was clear: the lightning struck back. Whether it scattered the storm or only lit the sky for a moment will become apparent as patrols move out again at dawn, feeling for wires in the gravel and watching the shadows along the rock.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.