Somalia Islamists pledge to continue attacks

Somalia’s radical Islamist militant group al-Shabaab will not stop its attacks on “infidels until they are expelled from the land of Muslims,” a representative of the extremist group said on Thursday. “None of the infidels will ever feel safe in Somalia or in any other Muslim country,” the statement said. It came just one day after al-Shabaab’s attack on a UN compound in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber blasted the gates to the compound, and a group of armed people broke into a UN Development Program office and opened fire. After an hour of clashes, troops of Somalia and the African Union Mission in Somalia regained control over UN compound. As a result 22 people were killed, including four foreign nationals. “This was an act of blatant terrorism and a desperate attempt to knock Somalia off its path of recovery and peace building,’’ said Nicholas Kay, the top UN official in Somalia. Over the past two years, al-Shabaab Islamists have suffered defeats on battlefields and had to pull out of cities and big settlements, and switch over to the tactics of partisan warfare.