{"id":23830,"date":"2016-03-11T00:31:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T00:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/al-shabab-denies-top-leaders-killed-in-us-air\/"},"modified":"2016-03-11T00:31:08","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T00:31:08","slug":"al-shabab-denies-top-leaders-killed-in-us-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/al-shabab-denies-top-leaders-killed-in-us-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Shabab denies top leaders killed in US air strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Senior commander makes public appearance to deny claims he and another leader were killed in raids in southern Somalia.}<\/p>\n

Mogadishu, Somalia – A senior al-Shabab commander has made a public appearance to deny claims that he and another group leader were killed in US air strikes last week at a training camp in southern Somalia.<\/p>\n

Washington said on Monday it had carried out several strikes in Somalia’s Hiiraan region, in which it claimed more than 150 of the al-Qaeda-linked group’s fighters had been killed.<\/p>\n

Somali officials said later on Monday that five al-Shabab commanders had been killed in Saturday’s attack, including Mohamed Mire, the group’s Hiiraan governor, and Yusuf Ali Ugas, al-Shabab’s former Hiiraan chief.<\/p>\n

But Mire appeared on Thursday in the village of Buqa Qabe – in the same province the air strikes took place – to dismiss the claims.<\/p>\n

“It is all lies. They said I was among those killed. But I’m here and doing well as you can see,” he told a crowd that had gathered to see the public execution of a man the group accused of being a Somali government soldier.<\/p>\n

Air strikes <\/p>\n

Al-Shabab, which is fighting Somalia’s internationally recognised government, has recently attacked and overrun military bases belonging to the African Union peacekeeping mission, AMISOM.<\/p>\n

The US air strikes occurred at 14:00 GMT on Saturday at a camp about 130km from Belidogle airport in the Lower Shabelle region – a major base for AMISOM troops. American soldiers are also present at the Belidogle base.<\/p>\n

The al-Shabab fighters were training for a large scale attack and posed an imminent threat to US and African Union forces in Somalia, according to the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

“It is all propaganda. America is losing this war and that is why they now have to resort to guerrilla tactic,” Mire added, in reference to a Wednesday morning raid on the town of Awdhegle – 50km south of the capital Mogadishu – by joint US and Somali special forces.<\/p>\n

Somali officials said more than a dozen al-Shabab fighters were killed in the raid which involved two helicopters. Al-Shabab said only one of its fighters was killed.<\/p>\n

There was no way of independently verifying both claims.<\/p>\n

\"Al-Shabab<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Senior commander makes public appearance to deny claims he and another leader were killed in raids in southern Somalia.} Mogadishu, Somalia – A senior al-Shabab commander has made a public appearance to deny claims that he and another group leader were killed in US air strikes last week at a training camp in southern Somalia. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23830"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23830"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}