Somalia’s Shebab fighters have warned they will “cut the throat” of members who shift allegiance from Al-Qaeda to Islamic State, amid reports some factions have already been punished for doing so.

“If anyone says he belongs to another Islamic movement, kill him on the spot,” top Shebab official Abu Abdalla, said in a radio broadcast Monday. “We will cut the throat of any one… if they undermine unity.”

The Shebab, East Africa’s long-time Al-Qaeda branch, is fighting to overthrow the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu, which is protected by 22,000 African Union troops.

The Islamists have lost much ground in recent years but remain a threat in both Somalia and neighbouring Kenya, where they have carried out a series of attacks.

The reported divisions come at a time when Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has become the jihadist franchise of choice, attracting fighters from abroad and the allegiance of other militant groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria.

But Al-Qaeda has also recently expanded its territory in Yemen, just across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia.

A handful of Shebab factions have switched allegiance to IS but the shift has failed to gain momentum. Pro-IS groups have been attacked and their leaders assassinated as Shebab emir and Al-Qaeda loyalist Ahmed Diriye seeks to shore up his control.

Last month President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said “the now-public dispute” within Shebab showed the group had “lost its way”.

But Abdalla said Shebab remained united. “The world wanted us to be divided,” he said.

thepeninsulaqatar.com

Ona Ekhomu, the President of the Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria, has raised an alarm, saying that an ISIS attack on Nigeria is imminent.

Ekhomu said recent intelligence reports obtained, revealed that Nigeria may be the next target of the International terror organisation.

He said “ISIS could use its Nigerian affiliate, Boko Haram, to wreak havoc here in order to signal its capability to carry out worldwide terrorist attacks and add to its stocks of fear.

“Having millions of Nigerians on the lookout for terrorists, reporting suspicious activities to the authorities, is better than 400,000 police and military personnel searching for terrorists.

“With proper enrolment, citizens can become the arrow-head in the search for terrorists as citizens are everywhere. With trained eyes, they can recognise Terrorist Attack Pre-incident Indicators in order to spot suicide bombers, bomb planters and active-shooters.”

Boko Haram, in a video released online, declared allegiance to ISIS.

busyghana.com

Five girls have killed at least 12 people in Nigeria and Cameroon in suicide bombings over the weekend, officials have said.

Police blamed the Islamist militant group Boko Haram for the attacks, in which the teenage bombers also died.

One girl detonated explosives strapped to her body on Sunday evening at a military checkpoint guarding an entrance to the north-eastern city of Maiduguri, Nigeria, they said. She killed herself and seven other passengers who got off a bus to be searched. A dozen people were injured.

It was the first suicide bombing in nearly a month in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram, whose six-year insurgency has killed about 20,000 people and driven an estimated 1.5 million to 2.3 million people in the region from their homes.

Soldiers at all entries to Maiduguri make people get out of vehicles about 500 metres from their checkpoints and advance with hands raised above their heads.

Cameroon said on Monday that four teenage suicide bombers had killed themselves and a family of five when they were stopped by a self-defence militia in Fotokol town, near the border with Nigeria.

“When a member of a local vigilante committee made to stop them, one blew herself up, killing five members of a family,” a government minister said. “On hearing the explosion, soldiers fired into the air to frighten [any attackers]. The three others panicked and detonated explosives tied round their bodies, but they only killed themselves.”

In many recent attacks, bombers have detonated explosives when stopped for searches that have become routine in parts of Nigeria and Cameroon where suicide bombings have become near-weekly events.

The routine searches and checkpoints now in place are believed to have prevented the suicide bombers from killing even more people.

Nigeria’s military has reported destroying a score of Boko Haram camps in recent weeks.

theguardian.com

Police and residents reported on Sunday what appeared to be a drone attack on Balad Amin, about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) to the east of Wanlaweyn in the lower Shabelle region of Somalia.

“We heard three big crashes at an al Shabaab base in Balad Amin last night. It looked like a drone but we have no news of casualties,” Adan Ahmed, a resident of the area, told the Reuters news agency.

Earlier in March, the U.S. Defense Department said that a drone strike in southern Somalia killed Adnan Garaar, an al Shabaab leader believed to be the architect of a 2013 attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that killed 67 people.

In its bid to topple Somalia’s Western-backed government, Al Shabaab fighters have staged multiple bomb and gun attacks in the capital Mogadishu. They have also hit targets in neighboring Kenya since Nairobi joined African Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia.

Al Shabaab were pushed out of Mogadishu by AU forces in 2011 but have continued attacks, often going after politicians and officials in Somalia, as well as AU and Somali forces.

Al Shabaab was unavailable for comment.

It was not known who was behind the aerial strike but the United States has in the past targeted al Shabaab fighters.

dw.com

Eight people were killed on Sunday when a female suicide bomber detonated her explosives among women and children arriving in Nigeria’s north-eastern city of Maiduguri seeking to escape Boko Haram violence in the countryside.

Mohammed Kanar, a local co-ordinator for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said the blast happened on Sunday morning as the group arrived from Dikwa, 90km to the northeast.

The restive city of Maiduguri has repeatedly been attacked by Boko Haram and the latest bloodshed again underlines the threat posed by the Islamist group, which has been launching guerrilla-style attacks since being pushed out of its captured territory and camps by a Nigerian army offensive.

Kanar said the bomber in Sunday’s attack was aged about 20 and struck as the group reached a checkpoint on the outskirts of Maiduguri.

“The IDPs (interally displaced persons), mostly women and children, were stopped for security checks at the checkpoint when the bomber, disguised as an IDP, sneaked in amongst them before setting off her explosives,” he told AFP.

“Eight people were killed and seven others were injured in the incident.”

Army spokesperson Colonel Sani Usman gave the same account and toll.

There has been a wave of suicide and home-made bomb attacks against civilians in urban areas recently, particularly Maiduguri, which in October alone was hit six times, killing at least 54 people.

On Saturday, four teenage girls blew themselves up in a village near Fotokol, in Cameroon’s far north region near the border with Nigeria, killing five, including a traditional chief.

Similar attacks have happened in Chad and Niger.

Dikwa was recaptured from Boko Haram in July and NEMA’s Kanar said the town had seen an influx of people from surrounding villages seeking military protection but the authorities had struggled to cope.

Poor infrastructure

“They had been short of supplies, mostly food and other items, which prompted some of them to move to Maiduguri,” he added.

“We intend to make some relief distribution in the coming days.”

The six-year Boko Haram insurgency has forced some 2.6 million people from their homes and left at least 17 000 dead.

The United Nations said this week that Maiduguri’s population had swollen to 2.6 million following an influx of 1.6 million people fleeing the violence and its aftermath.

Already poor infrastructure in rural areas of Nigeria’s northeast has been destroyed by the violence, with services such as healthcare and education devastated and agriculture severely hit by the unrest.

Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari has given his military commanders until next month to end the conflict but has conceded guerrilla-style attacks in urban centres could continue.

news24.com

The third batch of Chinese peacekeeping force conduct an emergency deployment readiness exercise on Nov. 21 in order to improve its ability to counter terrorism. (CNTV/Han Lijian)

A group of unidentified men attacked a hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako at around 8 a.m. on Friday, seizing 170 guests and staff. Three Chinese citizens were killed in this attack, the Chinese Embassy confirmed.

Chinese peacekeeping force that is based more than 1,000km away on the other side of the West African nation therefore conducted an emergency deployment readiness exercise. They will firmly act with authorization from the UN after the Mali government seeks assistance.

people.cn

Up to nine people are reported to have died after attackers armed with guns and grenades stormed a luxury hotel in Mali this morning.

Gunmen took 170 people hostages after reportedly using a vehicle to smash through security barriers at the Radisson Blu hotel in the capital Bamako at about 7am.

The men shouted “Allahu Akbar” or “God is great” in Arabic before firing on the guards and taking hostages, Malian army commander Modibo Nama Traore said.

The attack at the Radisson hotel is the latest in a string of terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda-linked groups in Mali.

The west African country has been gripped by an alarming political crisis since 2012 – the most serious since it gained independence from France in 1960.

During the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January this year, terrorist Amedy Coulibaly was overheard blaming French military action in Mali for his bloody supermarket siege.

The hotel

The Radisson Blu is a luxury hotel that is the most secure in the city and is often frequented by foreign businesspeople, UN and EU officials.

Located in the West of the city, it is situated in a business district close to embassies.

The hotel is part of the Radisson Blu chain, which has upmarket hotels across Europe, Africa and Asia, and is operated by Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, which has headquarters in the US and Belgium.

Recent history

Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants have been fighting the army in northern Mali for a number of years.

In August this year, gunmen in Mali killed at least 13 people including five UN peacekeepers in an attack on a hotel in the central town of Sevare.

In March, five people were killed when a masked gunman opened fire in La Terrasse, a bar in Bamako.

A Belgian security official working for the EU, a French national and three Malians died in the attack.

In April 2012 the north of Mali, an area known as Azawad, was seized by al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

They have since torn through the surrounding area, destroying Muslim shrines and imposing Sharia law.

In January 2013 France sent in military intervention and a peace deal was signed between the government and Tuareg rebels in June, leading to jihadists retreating.

But the rebels pulled out of the peace agreement later that year.

There are still large swathes of the North still in the control of the terrorists and attacks have continued and the area has become a terrorist training ground.

In August 2014 France set up Operation Barkhane, an anti-terrorist operation in Africa’s Sahel region targeting five former French colonies – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Mali.

The main players

There are several competing insurgent groups in Mali.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad took over the northern region in 2012 and are fighting for a homeland for Mali’s minority Tuarag community.

Ansar Dine is a home-grown movement led by renowned former Tuareg rebel leader Iyad Ag Ghaly aiming to impose Islamic law across Mali.

The Macina Liberation Front (MCF) emerged in central Mali recently and has claimed responsiblity for the attack in August in Sevare that killed 13 people. There is growing speculation that MLF represents the new Boko Haram – the Islamist insurgent in Nigeria.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is a large terrorist organisation mostly comprising Algerian and Saharan communities aiming to spread Islamic law and liberate Malians from French colonial legacy.

Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa is a splinter group of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb that aims to spread jihad across the region rather confine itself to the Sahel and Maghreb regions.

Meanwhile Tuareg separatists continue to fight the Islamists.

mirror.co.uk

The naval squadrons of South Korea and China conducted joint anti-piracy drills in the Gulf of Aden and waters off the coast of Somalia this week, according to China’s military on Friday, in a rare show of military cooperation between the two nations.

The one-day drills, took place on Tuesday, involved a South Korean destroyer Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin and a Chinese guided-missile frigate Liuzhou, the People’s Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese military, reported late Thursday.

Both South Korea and China have joined international anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia.

Rear Adm. Yu Manjiang, commander of the Chinese naval unit, told the Chinese military newspaper that, “The two sides worked in coordination in all the subjects, fully reflecting the military competence and upbeat character of the officers and soldiers from both sides.”

Yu said the drills “deepened their mutual trust and friendship.”

South Korea and China are former battlefield foes as China fought alongside North Korea in the 1950-53 Korean War, while the United States and 20 other allied countries fought on South Korea’s side under the U.N. flag.

But Seoul and Beijing have steadily improved ties since establishing diplomatic relations in 1992. Though their ties had initially focused heavily on economic aspects, the two countries have increased dialogue and cooperation on political and security issues in recent years as well.

koreaherald.com