Al-Qaeda's East Africa network 'regrouping and rearming in northern Somalia'

By Mike Pflanz, Garowe, Puntland

Al-Qaeda's network in East Africa is regrouping and rearming in northern Somalia, suggesting that it could recover from a series of defeats in the south, according to the president of the region.

New recruits belonging to Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebel group

 If the extremists manage to regroup in this mountainous region, they could attack Ethiopia or Kenya, both of which have deployed troops in Somalia, he told The Daily Telegraph.

Al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist movement which has merged with al-Qaeda, was expelled from the capital, Mogadishu, and much of the south earlier this year. Instead of this being a decisive setback, however, the evidence suggests that key figures have moved northwards to Puntland, a self-governing area covering 130,000 square miles of northern Somalia. Last week, two Islamist commanders and nine fighters were arrested in this region.

Abdirahman Farole, the president of Puntland, said that the successful offensive mounted by African Union forces against al-Shabaab in and around Mogadishu had caused a "spillover" of extremists into his area.

Among the 11 al-Shabaab operatives who were arrested in Puntland is the alleged leader of its assassination squad. "They were found with new weapons, arms and ammunition, and, apart from two of them, they were not local, they came from all across Somalia," said Mr Farole.

"It is not hard to understand that their goal was to connect with others we fear are already here, after the spillover from the fighting in the south."

The two alleged commanders have been named as Abu Hafsa, supposedly al-Shabaab's head of assassinations, and Abdirizak Hussein Tahlil, an alleged logistics expert.

Puntland's security forces also seized guns, ammunition, suicide jackets, hand grenades, fuses and explosives. But al-Shabaab said that it did not recognise either name and denied any of its senior fighters was missing.