32 child recruits rescued from al Shabaab

MOGADISHU: Somali authorities said troops stor med a school run by al Shabaab and rescued 32 children who had been taken as recruits by the Islamist militant group.

“The children are safe and the gover nment is looking after them. It is unfortunate that terrorists are recruiting children to their twisted ideology,” Abdirahman Omar Osman, information minister for the Somali federal government, said yesterday.

“It showed how desperate the terrorists are, as they are losing the war and people are rejecting terror.”

Al Shabaab said government forces, accompanied by drones, had attacked the school in Middle Shabelle region on Thursday night. It said four children and a teacher died.

No comment was immediately available from the Somali government on the reports of casualties or the use of drones.

“They kidnapped the rest of the students,” said Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military spokesman. “Human Rights Watch is responsible for the deaths of the students and their teacher because it pointed fingers at them.”

In a report this week, the New York-based rights group said that since September 2017, al Shabaab had ordered village elders, teachers in Islamic religious schools, and rural communities to hand over hundreds of children as young as 8.

The al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militia is fighting to topple the UN-backed government and establish its own rule based on a strict interpretation of Islam’s sharia law. – Reuters