MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A group loyal to Islamic State seized the small port town of Qandala in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region on Wednesday, the first town it has taken since emerging a year ago, officials said.

The group, which refers to itself simply as Islamic State, is a rival to the larger al Shabaab force, which is linked to Islamic State’s rival al Qaeda and once controlled much of Somalia.

“Our soldiers were few and so could not fight longer,” district commissioner Jamac Mohamed Khuurshe said. African peacekeepers are not deployed in Puntland, which lies at the eastern tip of the Horn of Africa.

Soldiers and many residents fled and the militants cut off Qandala’s communications, Khuurshe said.

Earlier on Wednesday, al Shabaab seized a town in southern Somalia after African and Somali government troops withdrew, part of an ongoing back and forth in the region.

Islamic State has been gathering recruits in Puntland, although experts say the scale of its force is unclear and it remains a small player compared to al Shabaab.

Before Qandala’s phone lines were cut off, fisherman Abdirahman Hussein told Reuters: “We just saw Daesh (Islamic State) with their black banner as we were fishing. They said to us: ‘Don’t panic, we will rule you according to the Islamic sharia (law)’.”

Major Saiid Ali, a Puntland police officer, said the group had previously entered two small villages before retreating to hideouts in the Puntland hills, but had never before seized a town.

The Puntland Islamist group first announced its alignment to Islamic State a year ago in a statement on YouTube.

The group is led by Abdiqadir Mumin, a former al Shabaab commander, a sign that some al Shabaab fighters see al Qaeda as a spent force and have been inspired by Islamic State’s campaign in Iraq and Syria.

Several groups beyond Islamic State’s Middle East heartland have made similar declarations of allegiance, although experts say these links are unlikely to go much beyond ideological sympathies.

Al Shabaab has yet to make any comment on the Puntland group.

Separately, al Shabaab said it was behind the killing of a 60-year-old colonel, Siyad Mohamed, in Mogadishu late on Wednesday, following the assassination of an intelligence officer in the capital on Monday.

Al Shabaab’s seizure of Tiyeeglow in southern Somalia on Wednesday gave it back control of an area over which it has long fought with the African Union’s AMISOM force and Somali soldiers.

Ethiopian government spokesman Getachew Reda said the Ethiopian troops that withdrew were not part of Ethiopia’s AMISOM contingent, and that any redeployment was done in consultation with Somali troops.</s>The Somali coast guard carry out a patrol off the coast of Bosaso in Puntland on November 19, 2013. By Mohamed Abdiwahab (AFP/File)

Mogadishu (AFP) - Several dozen armed men belonging to an Islamic State-linked group on Wednesday seized control of a small port in Somalia's Puntland region, local residents said.

"We are getting information that Qandala has fallen this morning," said Mohamed Muse, an elder in the town of Bossaso, which lies about 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Qandala.

"Armed Islamist militiamen who we believe are connected with the Islamic State organisation stormed the town and told people they are in control," he said.

Amaq, the IS news agency, reported that Qandala, located on the Gulf of Aden opposite Yemen, had been taken by "Islamic State fighters".

Several local officials said it had fallen to armed Islamists and that part of the population had fled.

"Fishermen near Qandala are reporting the town is being taken and they are not fishing today," said Abdiweli Adan, a resident of the nearby village of Karin.

"The Islamist fighters have taken position alongside the coast and several locations inside town but we don't know who exactly they are," he added.

Government officials in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in northern Somalia, did not comment on the attack.

While the Al-Qaeda affiliated Shabaab group is active in much of the south and centre of Somalia, it barely has a presence in Puntland.

In March, a few dozen Shabaab fighters travelled by sea from southern Somalia and briefly took control of several coastal villages in Puntland before being killed or captured by the region's security forces.</s>A breakaway group of around 50 Somali militants who declared loyalty to the Islamic State jihadists abandoned a small port town on Thursday a day after occupying it, residents and an official said.

"The militants left town early this morning but they are not far away," said Abdiweli Adan, an elder in a town close to Qandala which the IS-linked group occupied on Wednesday.

He said the group's black flag still flew over government buildings in the small seaside town on the Gulf of Aden coast of Puntland, a semi-autonomous state in northern Somalia.

"Some fishermen saw them staying close by in mountainous enclaves," said Adan, who added the militants left as they had arrived, peacefully.

A security official in the regional capital Bossaso said the threat of an arriving force of Puntland soldiers had scared the militants off.

"Puntland sent hundreds of special forces to deal with the terrorists. Unfortunately, they have run away even before the forces reached the town," said Cabdirisak Mohamed, a security official in the capital Bossaso, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) west of Qandala.

The militants — led by former Shabaab cleric Abdiqadir Mumin — switched allegiance from Al Qaeda to IS a year ago but have done little since apart from issuing occasional promotional videos.

Nevertheless, in late August the US State Department named Mumin a "global terrorist" making him a potential target for US drone strikes which are regularly carried out against jihadists in Somalia.

Abdukadir Said, a trader from Qandala said aircraft flying over the town may have spooked the militants. "There were aircraft hovering over Qandala during the last six hours" before they left, he said.

Once a pirate stronghold, Qandala is an ancient trading and fishing town whose main significance is its proximity to Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, where Al Qaeda and IS groups both operate. In the past the Shabaab has been resupplied with weapons and fighters sent from Yemen.
A militant group affiliated with ISIL seizes the coastal town of Qandala in the autonomous Puntland region.