More than 200 al Shabaab fighters and their leaders on Wednesday night and Thursday morning surrendered to the African Union Mission in Somalia. The fighters and their leaders told Amisom troops and the Somalia National Army that they had defected from the militia and begged for leniency.
They asked to be allowed to fight alongside the UN-backed troops to oust their former colleagues as Amisom marches into Kismayu. The insurgent fighters surrendered in Bibi, Soya and Jana Cabdalla and others even left their defense positions in Kismayu. "We will not take them and have them fight alongside us.
They cannot be trusted because they have been fighting against us," a military source said. The military and police have been monitoring the border with Somalia to ensure the defectors are taken into custody and interrogated. Some of Amisom success in Sector 2 has been attributed to intelligence collected from al Shabaab defectors. The defection has dealt a major blow to the al Shabaab insurgents, some of their leaders are fleeing Kismayu together with foreign jihadists.
