Eleven soldiers including a senior commander were Tuesday killed in an attack on an army camp north of Mogadishu claimed by Al-Shabaab, a militia commander in the area told AFP.

“Eleven members of the army, including a senior military commander, died in the attack, and dozens of the terrorists were killed,” Mohamed Osman, a local clan militia commander allied with the government, said by phone of the attack in Hawadley.

He said the Islamists detonated a car packed with explosives outside the camp 60 kilometres north of Mogadishu before armed men stormed the compound.

Ahmed Mohamud, a military commander with the Somali National Army (SNA) in the nearby town of Balcad, said more than 10 people had died in the attack but added the toll was provisional.

“The terrorists have been repelled and the Somali army are in full control of the area,” he said.

Al-Shabaab, a militant group allied with Al-Qaeda that controls swathes of countryside in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attack via its communication channels.

The attack comes a day after the army captured the strategic coastal town of Haradhere that had been under Al-Shabaab control for more than a decade.

Somalia’s armed forces on Monday captured a strategic coastal town that  Al-Shabaab jihadists had held for more than a decade, officials said.

Government forces, which have been waging a major offensive against the Al-Qaeda-linked group since the middle of last year, took control of Haradhere without any fighting, according to government and army officials.

Haradhere is a port town 500 kilometres (300 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu in central Somalia, and was a key supply route for Al-Shabaab, deputy telecommunications minister Hussein Ahmed told AFP.

Ahmed, who is one of several senior government officials embedded with the forces that advanced on Haradhere, described it as a “historic victory” for the Somali people.

In recent months, the army and local clan militias have retaken swaths of territory in the centre of the country in an operation backed by US air strikes and an African Union force.

“I commend the members of the national armed forces and those from the local community who have taken control of another important district from the kharijites (renegades),” Prime Minister Hamzi Abdi Barre said in a statement, using a government term for Al-Shabaab.

He added: “2023 is the year of freedom and the eradication of Al-Shabaab, and our whole country will be liberated from the desperate kharijites.”

Al-Shabaab has been waging a bloody insurgency against the weak internationally-backed central government for 15 years, carrying out attacks both in Somalia and neighbouring countries which sent troops to help in the fight against the militants.

Although forced out of Mogadishu and other main urban centres more than a decade ago, Al-Shabaab remains entrenched in parts of rural central and southern Somalia

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared “all-out war” on the jihadists after taking office in May last year.

But they have frequently retaliated against the offensive with bloody attacks in the capital and elsewhere.

On Saturday, eight people were killed in a roadside bombing in a city in central Somalia where government forces and clan militias have been battling the Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents since the middle of last year.

At an anti-Al-Shabaab rally last Thursday, Mohamud urged the crowds to flush out the Islamist militants, likening them to “bedbugs”.

South Africans will on Tuesday begin seven days of mourning in in honour of Frene Ginwala, who became the founding speaker of South Africa’s first democratically elected parliament.

Ms Ginwala died on Thursday night aged 90.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has directed that the national flag be flown at half-mast around the country until the evening of Tuesday 24 January 2023, according to a statement from his office.

More details will be announced later on an official memorial service that will take place in Johannesburg next Tuesday.

During the 1960s and 1970s Ms Ginwala lived in exile in Mozambique from where she helped many prominent members of the banned African National Congress (ANC) escape abroad.

Ms Ginwala also travelled around the world drawing international attention to the abuses of the apartheid era.

Learning in primary and secondary schools resumes on Tuesday in Malawi’s two major cities following a cholera outbreak that killed hundreds of people.

Schools in the capital, Lilongwe, and the commercial hub, Blantyre, had remained closed for at least two weeks after the Christmas holidays.

The cholera outbreak began in March last year and has so far killed more than 750 people.

Infections are still high in Lilongwe and Blantyre.

Health Minister Khumbize Chiponda said schools now have access to safe water and improved sanitation facilities, which will go a long way in reducing infections reported in schools.

The minister was optimistic that infections in schools would reduce due to improved sanitation facilities.

Malawi is among 31 countries globally hardest hit by cholera.

Last week, the government asked for international assistance as it was running low on medical supplies.

The widespread cases of cholera in the country are as a result of the aftermath of tropical storm Ana and cyclone Gombe that caused extensive flooding last year and destroyed the country’s water and sanitation systems.