Mogadishu, February 02: Somalia’s militant group Al-Shabaab announced Monday, February 1, joining Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization.
“We have agreed to join the international jihad of Al-Qaeda,” the militant group said in a statement. It said that the smaller outfit Ras Kamboni group had agreed to join ranks with its fighters.
“We agreed to unite as Shebab group and seek to bring other mujahedin within the group.”
The Ras Kamboni group was one of four small local factions under the larger Hezb al-Islam group led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys..
The group is led by Hassan Turki, a key figure in the strategically important southern port city of Kismayo.
Turki is accused Washington of being a “financer of terrorism.”
Shabaab also announced struggle against neighboring countries.
“We have also agreed to unite al Shabaab and Kamboni mujahideen to liberate the Eastern and Horn of Africa community who are under the feet of minority Christians,” it said, in an apparent reference to Ethiopia.
“We have united to revive the military strength, economy and politics of our mujahideen to stop the war created by the coloizers and to prevent the attacks of the Christians who invaded our country.
This is the first time by Shabaab to declare allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
Shabaab and allied Hezb al Islam militant group have been launching deadly attacks against the West-backed government of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Mohamed.
The attacks have killed hundreds of civilians and displaced thousands.
Bloodshed
This comes as at least 12 civilians were killed scores wounded in attacks in the capital Mogadishu.
“Our team collected eight bodies of civilians who were killed in the shelling and 55 others who were injured, some of them seriously,” Ali Musa, the head of the war-ravaged city’s ambulance service, told.
Witness Abdulahi Nure said four other civilians were killed by the artillery fire in another neighborhood.
A police official accused the Shabaab militants of using the civilian population as human shields.
“They (militants) fired mortar shells from the civilian populated areas using them as human shields,” he told on condition of anonymity.
Another witness, Moahmed Aban Ilbir, said around 20 heavy artillery shells hit the district of Suqaholah in indiscriminate shelling.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since the 1991 ousting of Mohamed Siad Barre.
Last year, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Somalia as the state most at risk of total collapse.
It also painted the country as ” the most dangerous place on earth.”
-Agencies