The al Qaeda-inspired militants, beset by financial troubles and rifts among senior commanders, withdrew most of their fighters from the Somali capital earlier this month, but are still putting up some resistance in pockets of Mogadishu and the threat of guerrilla-style attacks remains.
Al Shabaab have been waging a four-year insurgency against the Western-backed government and African Union peacekeepers who have been deployed to help keep the peace in a country plagued by two decades of civil conflict since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The Somalia director for the SOS Children charity, Ahmed Ibrahim, told Reuters that government troops and AU peackeepers had been advancing towards the northern segment of Mogadishu for the last three or four days.
“It looks like they got some resistance from al Shabaab today,” Ahmed Ibrahim said.
“We have been getting stray bullets in the hospital. We evacuated children … Patients started running away and some of the staff fled from the hospital,” he said, adding there were still some people remaining in the complex which includes the hospital as well as a children’s orphanage.
Dahir Abdulle, a nurse at the SOS hospital described a deserted hospital ward.
“Today, anti-aircraft gun shots deafened us-then a stray bullet hit the veil of a patient’s relative. I took cover inside the dispensary. After minutes, I came out but could not see a single patient,” he told Reuters.
“Relatives rushed patients who still had I.V. drips attached to them.”