Aw Dheegle, Somalia ¨C The helicopter pilot was worried. Any more than 20 minutes in this shattered front-line village and Somalia¡¯s al-Shabab militants could start lobbing mortars at their position.
Roughly 1,000 Somali National Army (SNA) forces are holding Awdheegle, a strategic town roughly 60 kilometers outside the capital Mogadishu, with the help of an African Union contingent after it was retaken less than seven weeks ago from the al-Qaida-linked militants.
But their hold is shaky and the helicopter ¡ª one of the few in the SNA fleet and showing its age ¡ª is a tempting target for the insurgents just a few kilometers away.
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