Somalian security forces and allied groups have taken a strategic town held by al-Shabab terrorists since 2016 in central Somalia, according to a statement by officials and the African Union (AU).
The government, backed by AU troops and clan militias, said it has killed around 700 members of al-Shabab and recaptured scores of settlements as part of a months-long campaign to loosen the al-Qaida-linked group's control over large swathes of the country.
The army and local clan militias known as "Macawisley" have retaken swathes of territory in the central states of Galmudug and Hirshabelle in recent months in an operation backed by U.S. air strikes and an African Union (AU) force, ATMIS.
Mahamud Hasan Mahamud, the mayor of Adan Yabal in Middle Shabelle region, said the army and militias had taken control of the town and the surrounding district of the same name without encountering resistance on Monday.
"This district of Adan Yabal was very important for al-Shabab because it is the heart that connects the central regions and the south of Somalia. It was also their main base from which they manage the central regions," Mahamud told Reuters late Monday.
He said the troops were sweeping the town, which is around 240km (150 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu, for mines.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said al-Shabab's fighters had taken residents of the town as human shields and destroyed infrastructure.
"They took with them pumps of the wells and some residents as (human) shields for fear of being bombed," he said in a televised address after the town's capture.
Al-Shabab's spokespeople were not immediately reachable to comment on the town's capture and the accusations of holding residents as human shields.
The head of the AU mission in Somalia, Mohammed El-Amine Souef, described the town as a training ground for al-Shabab, and said the broader campaign was delivering "destructive and decisive" blows against the group.
Al-Shabab frequently abandons areas before army offensives, but the government often fails to hold recaptured territory, analysts say, allowing the militants to return.
"When they entered the town, al-Shabab were not there," Absher Mudey, a shop owner in Adan Yabal, told Reuters by telephone. "Most of the people fled because they were afraid that fighting would break out."
Colonel Mohamed Ali, one of the operation's commanders, told AFP the terrorists fled when they learned the army was approaching.
"We have taken the town without any resistance and the army is in full control," he added.
Military sources said the terrorists pulled out on Monday evening.
ATMIS, which supported the operation with helicopters, said al-Shabab had used Adan Yabal as a training base.
The al-Shabab, who have been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia's internationally backed federal government for 15 years, also used the town as a logistics hub.
Forced out of the country's main urban centers around 10 years ago, al-Shabab remains entrenched in vast swathes of rural central and southern Somalia and continues to carry out deadly attacks in Mogadishu.
On Oct. 29, 116 people in the capital were killed in two car bomb explosions at the education ministry, and eight civilians died in a 21-hour hotel siege on Nov. 27.
AMISOM, a previous incarnation of the AU force in Somalia, seized Adan Yabal from the terrorists in 2016 before ceding control a few months later after Ethiopian troops withdrew.