By Sarah McGregor

African Union forces killed more than 80 suspected members of the al-Shabaab militia in southern Somalia as part of an offensive to drive the rebels out of their remaining strongholds in the Horn of African nation.

The air strikes in the Lower Juba region killed about 30 fighters of the al-Qaeda-linked group in Anole and 50 insurgents in Kuday, and destroyed equipment including vehicles and ammunition, the African Union Mission in Somalia, or Amisom, said today in a statement e-mailed from Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya.

“We will employ all the means at our disposal to end their reign of terror,” Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the African Union Commission’s special representative, said in the statement.

Somalia Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said in February that he welcomes air strikes against al-Shabaab training camps and logistical hubs to defeat the group. Amisom, which includes more than 4,000 Kenyan troops, has stepped up its offensive after al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an assault on the Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in September in which at least 67 people were killed.

While the militia has also said it carried out attacks last week on the Kenyan coastal town of Mpeketoni that left at least 60 people dead, the country’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta, blamed the massacre on “local political networks.”

Amisom, which also includes forces from Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Sierra Leone, working alongside Somalia’s National Army, has taken control of more than 10 key towns from al-Shabaab as part of the offensive, according to the statement.

Source: Bloombergnews