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A key militant suspect wanted for several deadly attacks in the South, including the murder of former Bannang Sata police chief Sompien Eksomya, was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Yala yesterday.
Ma-ae Aphibalbae, 34, was among four militants found dead after a 15-minute shootout with a joint police-military ranger force at a house in Ban Cha Ro Pae in Than To district.
Ethiopian government troops have killed more than 100 civilians, including a local U.N. worker, during a five-day military operation in the oil and gas-rich Somali Region, a rebel group said on Monday.
More commonly known as the Ogaden, the ethnic Somali province is home to a low-key insurgency led by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which has fought for independence since 1984.
Government officials could not be reached for comment.
“The Ethiopian army and its local conscripts killed more than 100 civilian people from May 10 - 15 in the area, (and it) is still on going,” the ONLF said in a statement.
African Union peacekeepers have seized territory from Somali insurgents in the capital Mogadishu in a new offensive that is slowly closing in on the rebels’ main stronghold, a force spokesman said on Monday,
Major Paddy Ankunda said the deployment of up to 3,000 more peacekeepers, which would take the AMISOM force to 12,000 soldiers within the next two months, would help squeeze the rebels out of the heavily populated Bakara market.
‘The idea is that when we get new troops, we should be able to expand our fronts and then realise a new effort to push the insurgents out of the … Bakara market which is their main source of finances,’ said the Ugandan officer, speaking to reporters from Mogadishu by video link.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Friday claimed their first major attack to avenge Osama bin Laden`s death as 80 people were killed in a double suicide bombing on a paramilitary police training centre.
Around 140 people were wounded, 40 of them fighting for their lives, in the deadliest attack this year.
Friday`s explosions detonated in Shabqadar as newly trained paramilitary cadets, dressed in civilian clothes, were getting into buses for a 10-day leave, police said.
“This was the first revenge for Osama`s martyrdom. Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Heavy battle between Somalia’s Ahlu Sunna Waljama ASWJ and Al shabaab fighters on Thursday broke out in parts of Galguduud region in central Somalia.
The two warring sides have used both heavy artillery barrages and light weapons, local residents said.
Most of the combat rocked the villages of Dhagahley and Hayale as fighters loyal Al shabaab movement attacked military bases manned by Ahlu Sunna there.