Boko Haram fighters trained in Somalia: president

Fighters for the militant group Boko Haram have been trained in Somalia on Africa’s eastern coast before returning to West Africa, Somalia’s president told a security conference in Germany on Sunday.

Somalia, plagued by political in-fighting, corruption and attacks by al Shabaab insurgents, has recently made limited progress towards creating a functioning political system, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said.

“Without a stable Somalia, the whole region of the Horn of Africa will remain unstable and by and large, the African continent. There are proofs and evidence that (for) some time Boko Haram has been trained in Somalia and they went back to Nigeria,” he said.

“The terrorists are so linked together, they are associated and so organised, (that) we the world we need to be so organised,” he said, speaking in English.

It was not clear from his comments whether he believed al Shabaab was still training Boko Haram fighters, who have pledged allegiance to ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq.

Somalia’s al Shabaab, which has links to al Qaeda and wants to overthrow the Somali government claimed responsibility for a blast this month that punched a hole in the fuselage of a plane.