Somalia army, allies retake key al-Shabab stronghold as UN warns of refugee crisis

Somali government forces and allied militias, backed by the United States and African Union (AU), have recaptured a strategic town that the al-Shabab armed group had controlled for six years.

Pro-government forces entered the town of Adan Yabal in Hirshabelle, about 220km northeast of the capital Mogadishu, after the al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters withdrew without resisting, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a televised address on December 6. It has been hailed as a strategic victory in the broader campaign waged by the Somali army and local clans, backed by US air attacks and helicopter support from an AU force, ATMIS, to drive fighters out of the states of Galmudug and Hirshabelle.

ATMIS said the Islamist group had used Adan Yabal as a training base since 2016. The force welcomed its return to Somali government control. The fighters, who have been waging a bloody war against Somalia’s internationally recognized federal government for 15 years, also used the town as a logistics hub.

Meanwhile, the United States refugee agency has warned humanitarian conditions are deteriorating for tens of thousands of Somalis in the Dadaab refugee camps across the border in Kenya as unrelenting drought grips the Horn of Africa and funding dries up. More than 80,000 Somalis fleeing conflict and drought have arrived in the refugee camps over the past two years, more than 24,000 since September. This is exacting an enormous burden on the local communities and refugees already living in the camps, which house an estimated 230,000 refugees. Kenya has been hosting more than half a million refugees and asylum seekers in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps and urban areas for over three decades. This is the second largest number in Africa after Ethiopia.