Somali forces kill 81 Shabaab militants in Jilib in latest offensive

US and Somali forces elite squads ramped up offensives this past week killing dozens of Al-Shabaab militants in south western Somalia region of Bay as Amisom and Somali Army forces wage an onslaught against the group in Lower and Middle Shabelle regions in the southern part of the country.

Information Minister Abdirahman Osman and the Intelligence agency NISA said Sunday 81 militants were killed in airstrikes in Jilib district some 380 km south of the capital Mogadishu.

“Somali security forces conducted special operations in Jilib district and destroyed an Al-Shabaab camp where terrorists were regrouping to launch attacks on Gedo region area,” Osman said in a statement issued in Mogadishu. “Some 81 militants were killed, a number of vehicles and heavy weapons destroyed.”

National Intelligence Service Agency (NISA) also put out a statement Saturday noting it ‘carried out retaliatory attacks on Al-Shabaab fighters in Jilib on behalf of massacred Somali people’ killing 81 militants.

The US Africa Command (Africom) said Thursday it killed several militants in Bay region, 100 miles west of Mogadishu. Thursday’s strike is the 23 such strikes this year from US forces on Al-Shabaab.

The strikes reinforced by ground offensives from Amisom and Somali forces comes barely a month after a deadly truck bomb attack in Mogadishu which claimed over 400 lives. Another terror attack at Nasa Hablod II claimed 29 lives late October.