Local Editor

Soldiers loyal to the UN-backed Somali government Wednesday retook control of a port town from insurgents who had declared allegiance to Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"], a Reuters witness at the scene said.

Shire Haji Farah, Puntland's minister for planning, told Reuters in the port town of Qandala, which has been under insurgent occupation for a month, "we now control Qandala port town" and that the Daesh militants "ran away into the hills without fighting."

Daesh who had a marginal presence in Somalia took the northern town of Qandala in the Puntland region on 26 October.

Since then, the Puntland Security Forces [PSF] launched an assault to retake the district and town from the terrorist group. 25,700 out of Qandala districts 45,300 people became displaced as a result of the Daesh takeover and the ensuing battles.

The first breakthrough was three days ago when the PSF successfully took the villages of Madlaxo and Af-Bashashin from the Takfiri group.

This culminated the direct route for the retaking of Qandala, a town of just under 20,000 people.

The town had just been liberated by the Somali forces, expelling the terrorist group into obscurity, in a country whose Takfiris are mostly a part of al-Qaeda aligned al-Shabaab.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team