|
Addis Ababa: Allied Ethiopian-Somali troops in Somalia have killed 71 insurgents in an operation launched in central regions late last week, Ethiopia's state television reported.
Hardline fighters have been waging an 18-month insurgency that has drawn comparisons with Iraq, to undermine the interim government and its Ethiopian backers since the rebels were ousted from Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia in 2007.
"The joint Ethiopian army and forces of the Somali Transitional Federal Government destroyed a group of 71 terrorists in a military operation in Meteban and Gura'el areas," the television report quoted a military spokesman as saying late on Thursday. "A Canadian colonel, who was being sought for international terrorism, and 13 leaders of the Islamic Courts Union and Al Sha'abab were killed," the report said.
Insurgent troops were preparing to launch an offensive around Meteban and Gura'el areas in central Somalia, he said.
But a spokesman of the rebel movement said only seven fighters were killed and nine others wounded.
"The news from the Ethiopian State Agency is totally fabricated," rebel spokesman Shaikh Abdirahim Eisa Adow told Reuters. "We killed many Ethiopians and burnt their military vehicles but they do not admit to that."
|
