Stunned by an assault by sea, air and ground forces late on Friday night, al-Shabaab
... the personification of Somali state failure...
rebels fled the city that had been their key source of revenue, retreating to surrounding forests and towns.
However,
alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk...
there were conflicting reports on Sunday evening about how much of Kismayu African Union
...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
forces (AMISOM) now controlled.
The Kenya Defence Force (KDF), part of AMISOM, said it had seized the sea port, the police headquarters and the radio station, but a source in the Somalia National Army told Rooters AMISOM was close to taking control of those installations but had not yet done so.
The shells being fired by Kenyan warships may have been targeting remaining pockets of resistance or military installations in the city that was the rebels' last stronghold.
"The ships were firing deafening shells at the outskirts last night but several shells landed on houses," said Samira Ismail, a local mother of four.
Al-Shabaab said two children had been killed and other people maimed in the shelling, a statement rejected as propaganda by Col. Cyrus Oguna, a Kenyan military front man.
Kenyan and Somali troops sent to retake Kismayu from the rebels were on the town's outskirts, Oguna said earlier on Sunday, and were proceeding carefully in case al-Shabaab's claim to have abandoned the city was a ploy to lure them into a trap.
"The troops are consolidating and making plans to expand into the southern part of the city," Oguna told Rooters.