News / Somalia

Boko Haram militants trained in Somalia: President

Sunday, 14 February 2016 2:57 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 14 February 2016 2:56 PM ]

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, President of Somalia, speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, February 14, 2016. (Reuters)

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud says Nigeria’s Boko Haram militants have been trained in his country before going back to West Africa.

Mohamud said at a security conference in Germany that militant groups in Africa are associated and that the African states need to be organized to be able to deal with their threats.

He noted that his country, which is plagued by attacks by al-Shabab militants as well as corruption and political infighting, has only made limited progress in setting up a working political system.

Somalia has not had a functioning central administration since civil war erupted a quarter of a century ago.

"Without a stable Somalia, the whole region of the Horn of Africa will remain unstable and by and large, the African continent. There are proofs and evidence that (for) some time Boko Haram has been trained in Somalia and they went back to Nigeria," Mohamud said.

"The terrorists are so linked together, they are associated and so organized, (that) we the world we need to be so organized," he added.

Al-Shabab militants, which have link to al-Qaeda, have frequently staged attacks against government officials and civilians over the past years.

Boko Haram, on the other hand, has pledged allegiance to the Daesh Takfiri group, which is wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq.

Boko Haram terrorists have killed more than 1,650 people since the inauguration of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2015, and claimed the lives of over 17,000 people since the start of their insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, AFP figures show. They have since forced over 2.6 million others to flee their homes.

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