AW DHEEGLE, Somalia: The helicopter pilot is worried. Any more than 20 minutes in this shattered frontline village and Somalia\u2019s Al-Shabab militants could start lobbing mortars at their position.<\/p>\n
Roughly 1,000 Somali National Army (SNA) forces are holding Awdheegle, a strategic town roughly 60 kilometers outside the capital Mogadishu, with the help of an African Union contingent after it was retaken less than seven weeks ago from the Al-Qaeda-linked militants.<\/p>\n
But their hold is shaky and the helicopter \u2013 one of the few in the SNA fleet and showing its age \u2013 is a tempting target for the insurgents just a few miles away.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive more minutes, and I would have left you,\u201d the pilot tells the reporters as they clamber back in, the chopper stuttering up and banking over the town\u2019s remains.<\/p>\n
There is not much left to destroy in Awdheegle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found my house demolished. I have nothing to rebuild it,\u201d said recently returned resident Abdi Osman Hassan, 65.<\/p>\n
It is a similar story some 10 miles back toward Mogadishu at the deserted settlements of Sabiid and Canole.<\/p>\n
The area is a cratered mess thanks to drone and air strikes, which SNA commanders said were the only option after the militants dug in, creating tunnels and littering the area with explosives.<\/p>\n
Overwhelming firepower dislodged them in June, but the militants blew the bridge connecting the two settlements as they withdrew \u2013 using so much dynamite that there was barely a scrap left to scavenge.<\/p>\n
The new bridge, constructed with Turkish assistance, was recently completed under the watchful eye of a professional, if taciturn, Ugandan army unit.<\/p>\n
A Turkish contractor, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, was pessimistic after a month on the front line, where decent food and water are often scarce.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the powers do not behave and talk to each other, then the bridge…,\u201d he clicked his fingers to indicate a new explosion.<\/p>\n
And right now, he said, \u201ceveryone is feeding the dogs of war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AW DHEEGLE, Somalia: The helicopter pilot is worried. Any more than 20 minutes in this shattered frontline village and Somalia\u2019s Al-Shabab militants could start lobbing mortars at their position. Roughly 1,000 Somali National Army (SNA) forces are holding Awdheegle, a strategic town roughly 60 kilometers outside the capital Mogadishu, with the help of an African …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89775,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89777,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89751\/revisions\/89777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}