US drone strike in Somalia kills '150 fighters'

Pentagon says al-Shabab training camp, 195km north of Mogadishu, targeted over the weekend.

by frank

The US military has carried out a drone strike against an al-Shabab training camp in Somalia over the weekend, killing at least 150 fighters.
The Pentagon said on Monday that the strike occurred over the weekend on the camp about 195km north of the capital Mogadishu.

On the frontline of Somalia's fight against al-Shabab

"The fighters were there training and were training for a large-scale attack. We know they were going to be departing the camp and they posed an imminent threat to US and [African Union] forces," Captain Jeff Davis, Pentagon spokesman, said.
"It was an air operation. Initial assessments are that more than 150 terrorist fighters were eliminated," he said.
Davis said as many as 200 fighters were believed to be training at the camp which, he added, the US military had been monitoring for several weeks before the strike.
Earlier on Monday, six people were wounded when a bomb planted inside a notebook computer exploded at an airport in the small central town of Beledweyne.
The bomb detonated at a checkpoint about 325km north of the capital Mogadishu, where last month al-Shabab fighters claimed responsibility for a blast that tore a gaping hole in a passenger plane shortly after takeoff.