...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
gang attacked military bases in Somalia's northeastern Puntland
...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion...
state overnight with suicide car and cycle of violence
bombs, but government forces repelled the assault, and 
...KABOOM!...
s killed 70, a military official said on Tuesday.
Puntland announced a major offensive against Islamic State and a rival Islamist group, the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab
... the personification of Somali state failure...
, in December and claims to have since killed dozens of imported muscle, captured several IS bases, and forced a senior commander to surrender.
"Puntland's anti-terrorist forces knew the information and so foiled and rubbed out the jacket wallahs who were on foot, on bikes and cars," Mohamud Fadhigo, a Puntland military spokesperson, told Rooters.
The United Arab Emirates and other Gulf nations have been supporting the training of Somalia's armed forces in recent years.
"With the help of UAE air strikes, we also defeated the IS infantry. We killed about 70 Death Eaters," Fadhigo said.
He said Puntland forces had also suffered casualties in the overnight attack but declined to give a figure.
The Islamic State faction in Somalia has become an increasingly important part of its parent organization's worldwide network in recent years and was the target of US airstrikes earlier this month.
Somalia's state news agency reported on Tuesday that security forces had repelled attacks on military positions in the Hagaaro and Togo-Jecel areas of Puntland's Cal Miskaad mountains.
With an estimated 700 to 1,500 fighters, Islamic State's Somalia wing has grown in recent years thanks to an influx of imported muscle and increasing revenues.
But it is still much smaller than al-Shabaab, which controls large parts of southern and central Somalia.