Mogadishu, October 17: The fighting broke out on Saturday in the town of Baladweyn in the Hiran region.
Al-Shabab spokesman Abdiaziz Abu Muscab announced that members of his group killed several government soldiers and seized an armored vehicle.
“We snatched a military vehicle and killed a dozen Somali government troops,” Radio Garowe quoted Abu Muscab as saying in Mogadishu.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Over the past two decades, up to one million people have lost their lives in fighting between rival factions and due to famine and disease.
There are more than 1.4 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Somalia. Over 300,000 of the IDPs are sheltered in Mogadishu.
Most of the displaced live in poor and degrading conditions on makeshift sites in southern and central Somalia, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
———Agencies