FGS sends troops on SECOND phase of Al-Shabaab CRACKDOWN!

Amidst chaotic and turbulent events Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has deployed soldiers to various front lines for the second phase of the crackdown against Al-Shabaab militants.

The move comes just days before the official scale-down of soldiers serving in the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia [ATMIS].

This second phase will focus on the elimination of Al-Shabaab terrorists from Jubbaland and Southwest states where the militants may have shifted bases.

In Mogadishu, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud inspected a guard of honour mounted by the newly trained soldiers and flagged them off to join the rest of the Somali National Army [SNA] in various frontlines.

He declared a total war against the militants and said that he had “no doubt that you will liberate the rest of the country as we install civilian administration for proper service delivery to Somalis”.

Recently, Somalia received approximately 10,000 soldiers who graduated from various military schools in East Africa, particularly in Uganda and Eritrea, to help in fighting Al-Shabaab militants.

While Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti have pledged to dispatch non-ATMIS troops to the country to help in the second phase of clamping Al-Shabaab militants, the soldiers will be under SNA command in Mogadishu and will stay in the country for the next three months.

With the first phase yielding fruits and the federal government of Somalia hinting that about 3,000 Al-Shabaab militants were killed, Somalia is fighting to liberate several strategic towns across the country which are under Al-Shabaab control.