Prime minister says al-Shabaab fighters have now left 90% of the capital, raising prospect of faster delivery of humanitarian aid
A Somali refugee with her malnourished child at Banadir hospital in south Mogadishu. Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters
Islamist fighters have pulled out from many bases in the Somali capital in a move that could speed up the delivery of humanitarian services tofamine victims, the prime minister has said.
Somali prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali estimated the al-Shabaab militants now have vacated 90% of the capital. The African Union had said last week that militants had left 60% of Mogadishu. Ali said the government wanted to send security forces into the new areas vacated by the militants, who are linked to al-Qaida, describing the withdrawal as the "first phase of the new war".
The militants insisted it was merely a tactical withdrawal before a counterattack. "We shall fight the enemy wherever they are," al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamed Rage told a local radio station.
Fighters have blocked many aid organisations from the south and have complicated efforts to help those in Mogadishu. More than 29,000 children under the age of five have died in the last 90 days in the country's south alone, according to US estimates.
Residents reported al-Shabaab militia leaving their positions overnight but it was not clear if they had left the city. Since it was born from the ruins of another radical Islamist group in 2007, al-Shabaab has never abandoned Mogadishu entirely.
Ali said he saw about 150 fighters leaving the northwest of the capital, adding that they may have left town due to a lack of finances and disagreements between leaders.
Lieutenant-Colonel Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the 9,000-strong African Union peacekeeping forces in Mogadishu, said al-Shabaab had melted into the population and would become more difficult to deal with. "We need more troops now than ever before. The area has become too big for the force to cover," he said.
Sodio Omar Hassan, who was seeking treatment for her child's malaria at a hospital set up by African Union peacekeepers, said people were angry at al-Shabaab's response to the relief effort. She said militia groups declined to grant the UN permission to distribute maize and cooking oil in territory it controls. "People are angry now they are dying," she said. "Al-Shabaab don't bring us anything."
More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa need immediate food aid but al-Shabaab proclaims it would be better to starve than accept Western aid. The UN says 640,000 children are acutely malnourished inSomalia.
Somalis who have fled the famine zones say that militants are threatening refugees who leave the south, and often stop – and sometimes kill – the men.Somalia has been mired in war and anarchy for two decades, and piracy flourishes off its coastline. In a sign of how desperate the famine has become, many Somalis have fled from rural areas to Mogadishu, a war zone where AU peacekeepers have been battling the al-Shabab militants daily.
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