A senior ISIL (ISIS) commander in Somalia has been captured, police and state media have said, as security forces continue a weeks-long offensive against the group.
Abdirahman Shirwac Aw-Saciid, head of the group’s assassination squad, surrendered to authorities on Monday in the Cal Miskaad mountains, in the northeastern Puntland state, Somalia’s state news agency SONNA reported.
Two days after American airstrikes targeted the ISIL leadership in the country, the commander was detained.
Somalia’s ISIL branch has grown in importance over the past few years as a result of improved revenue collection and a rise in foreign fighter fighters’ presence in the organization’s global network.
The group claimed to have used two booby-trapped vehicles in a December military base attack, which security analysts said suggested more sophisticated tactics had been employed.
On Monday, the head of police in Puntland’s Bari region, Abdikadir Jama Dirir, confirmed the capture of Aw-Saciid, known by the alias “Laahoor”, who was also in charge of extorting local businesses for the group.
Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region announced a major offensive against ISIL and a rival group, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab, in December.
According to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, an initial assessment of Saturday’s US air strikes indicated that many fighters had died.
Hegseth added that ISIL’s ability to organize and execute attacks was weakened by the US air raids.
Donald Trump, the US president, also applauded the actions. “These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies. The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians”, Trump said in a statement.
Until recently, ISIL’s Somalia wing was considered a minor security threat in the Horn of Africa country compared with al-Shabab, which controls swathes of southern Somalia.
Source: Aljazeera
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