Al-Shabaab retakes Teedaan in Somalia’s Hiran region

MOGADISHU (Somaliguardian) – Al-Shabaab fighters recaptured the town of Teedaan in central Somalia’s Hiran region on Sunday, seizing a position that has long served as a key line of defence for the regional capital, after clashes that left dozens of people dead.

The assault began when insurgents struck a base manned by the Somali army and allied clan militias using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), touching off fighting that forced the allied forces to withdraw from the town entirely. It marked the first time since 2022 that Al-Shabaab has flown its flag over Teedaan and held control of it.

Al-Shabaab, through affiliated media channels, claimed its fighters killed 41 soldiers and wounded 60 others in the attack. The claim has not been independently verified. The Somali federal government, the national army and regional officials have not commented on the fighting, the withdrawal of forces, the reported casualties, or whether a counter-offensive to retake the town is planned.

Teedaan sits near Mahas, a town Al-Shabaab seized in a rapid offensive in 2025. Mahas had been under federal government control since 2014, when Ethiopian forces expelled Al-Shabaab from the area. Those Ethiopian forces withdrew in 2024, and Mahas changed hands for the first time in a decade.

Across 2025, Al-Shabaab retook dozens of other towns, villages and settlements throughout Hiran and Middle Shabelle regions – a resurgence that has underscored the difficulty Somali forces face in holding territory captured during offensives conducted with international air and, at times, ground support.

A commander’s warning, tested days later

The fall of Teedaan comes just days after U.S. Africa Command chief Gen. Dagvin Anderson, in an interview on Friday, described a recurring pattern in which Somali and international partner forces recapture ground previously lost to militants — territory that slips away again once political attention shifts elsewhere. Anderson attributed the cycle to political infighting and dysfunction within Somalia’s government.

“I was here active with the Special Operations Command from 2019 to 2021. And we worked with the Somali National Army and the Danab to move down the Lower Shabelle River to make progress, taking all the way down to Mubarak. I came back to AFRICOM as the commander, and we’re retaking the same territory again,” Anderson said.

“This is what causes the frustration, because that territory was lost because somewhere the focus on terrorism was not there and was elsewhere,” he added.

Hiran and the loss of Teedaan now stand as a real-time test of Anderson’s remarks — a test that, so far, is not unfolding in Mogadishu’s favour.

The setback comes as Somali media have reported in recent weeks that the federal government is preparing a large-scale military campaign to reclaim territory Al-Shabaab captured during its 2025 counter-offensive, when the group seized dozens of towns and villages it had lost in a federal offensive in 2022 — reversing most of the gains made in that earlier campaign.

What remains under government control

Following the fall of Teedaan, the Somali government holds only a handful of major towns in Hiran region — Baladweyne, Halgan, Mataban and Jalalaqsi — with the surrounding areas of each now under militant influence. All but one of these towns are manned by Ethiopian and Djiboutian peacekeeping forces.

Silence from Mogadishu

Somali authorities’ silence in the wake of Teedaan’s capture has drawn attention in itself. The government and army have historically moved quickly to dispute Al-Shabaab’s casualty claims when the group announces territorial gains.

Analysing the development, the Somali Digest website noted that Somali army commands typically respond fast to inflated claims of this kind, because leaving a figure such as 41 unchallenged cedes both the battlefield and the surrounding narrative to the group. It described rebuttals as a low-cost, minimum obligation owed to the families of the soldiers involved — and observed that on this occasion, no response came at all.

The outlet added that, as a result, Al-Shabaab’s account stands as the only detailed version of events at Teedaan available to anyone following the war — including soldiers holding neighbouring positions and clan militias weighing whether to keep fighting alongside them. It characterised the silence as a propaganda defeat layered on top of a territorial one, and one it judged avoidable in a way the territorial loss may not have been.

What comes next

There is growing concern that, following Teedaan’s fall, Al-Shabaab will move to pressure Baladweyne and the town of Mataban. Mataban is considered especially vulnerable, as it is not manned by African Union peacekeepers — though several villages, including Bacda and Beergadiid, lie between the militants’ current positions and the town.

Contact us: info@somaliguardian.com