Foreign Fighters in Heavy Fighting in Somalia

(Mogadishu, Somalia) In a press conference yesterday, the head of politics for Al Shabaab, Sheikh Hussein Ali Fidow, said that foreign fighters from across the Muslim world came to help their Somali brothers and they shouldn't be considered as foreigners.

He said he considers "only non-Muslims as foreigners," but defended foreign Islamists in Mogadishu as "ready to liberate Somalia" and warned people not to label them 'foreign fighters'. [...]

There is no reliable statistics on the number of foreign fighters active in Somalia, but Mogadishu residents expressed serious concern about the number of foreign fighters seen publicly alongside Al Shabaab during the past five days of heavy fighting in the seaside capital.

A human rights group, Mogadishu-based Elman, issued a report yesterday indicating that 113 people have been killed since last Thursday in fighting between pro-government forces and the Islamist rebel groups, Al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam. Another 345 have been wounded and 27,000 have been displaced from their homes.

It would be nice to know how many of the foreign fighters are Americans.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.