A US warship shelled suspected al-Qaeda targets in northeastern Somalia after Islamist fighters clashed with troops from the country's semi-autonomous region of Puntland, witnesses and officials said yesterday.
They said a US Navy destroyer fired on several targets overnight where Islamist militants are believed to have bases in mountainous and remote areas outside the coastal town of Bargal.
"The US military was targeting the al-Qaeda hideout. This was aimed at flushing out all the terrorists," said Mussa Jelle Yusuf, the governor for Barri region.
"Puntland troops are surrounding the Bargal hills and hunting for those Al-Qaeda elements. They ... will be captured or killed," he said.
Witnesses earlier confirmed the bombardment, but could not say if there had been any casualties.
"We cannot yet tell you the casualty figures, but what I can confirm is that the American warship shelled several targets in the surroundings of Bargal" late on Friday, a resident in the area said.
"The heavy shelling continued about three hours around the coastal area and the mountainous sites where the Islamists had their trenches," he said.
CNN reported that the destroyer was targeting a suspected al-Qaeda operative believed to have been involved in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
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