Ethiopia says it foiled al-Shabab attack near border with Somalia
Ethiopia says soldiers stopped attackers before they could “wreak havoc” in the border town of Dollo.
Ethiopia says it foiled a suicide bombing by the armed group al-Shabab in a border town with Somalia.
The Ethiopian army “kept the attackers on their heels before they could wreak havoc” in the Ethiopian-Somali border town of Dollo, the foreign ministry said in a Twitter post on Wednesday.
“The Ethiopian National Armed Forces neutralized suicide bombers and destroyed weapons alleged to be used by the terrorist group,” it added.
Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, has been waging an armed insurgency against Somalia’s central government for some 15 years.
Ethiopia foiled an attack by the terrorist group Al-Shabaab:
Earlier today, Ethiopia successfully foiled an attempted attack by the terrorist group Al Shabaab in the Ethiopian-Somali border town of Dollo.
— The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of #Ethiopia 🇪🇹 (@mfaethiopia) June 7, 2023
The armed group, meanwhile, claimed through its communication channels that it carried out two suicide bombings at an Ethiopian military base on the Somali side of the border, according to the US monitoring group SITE.
The first attack targeted “the headquarters of the local military command”, while the second hit a weapons and ammunition warehouse, it said.
“The two operations resulted in heavy casualties with dead and wounded,” the group said. Al-Shabab is known to exaggerate its claims of success on the battlefield.
The alleged incident in Dollo comes days after Uganda announced that 54 of its soldiers were killed in an attack on an African Union (AU) peacekeeper base in Somalia.
Al-Shabab was driven out of Mogadishu by an AU force in 2011, but it still controls large parts of the countryside and continues to launch deadly attacks against civilian, political and military targets.
It has targeted Ethiopia in retaliation for Addis Ababa sending troops to Somalia as part of the AU force — known as the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) — to oust the armed group. In mid-2022, the armed group attacked several Ethiopian military camps on the border between the two countries.
ATMIS, which has 22,000 troops, has been aiding the Somali federal government in its war against al-Shabab since 2022, when it replaced the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
Al-Shabab is also launching intermittent attacks in neighboring Kenya as part of reprisals for Nairobi sending troops to support Mogadishu’s pushback of the rebels.