Barawe, Somalia: About 1,000 African Union and Somali troops launched an assault on Sunday to retake the Al Shabab militant stronghold of Barawe on the southern Somali coast and has so far met no resistance, a Somali military official said.

The African Union and the Somali military launched a joint offensive in March to drive the Al Qaida-linked Islamists out of towns and areas they control, and stepped up their campaign in August after a surge in gun and bomb attacks in Mogadishu.

Several Al Shabab members across Somalia have been arrested and smaller towns retaken, but the rebels still hold swathes of territory. On August 30 the AU forces drove the militants out of the small southern town of Bulamareer.

Barawe is the biggest Al Shabab-held town that the offensive has targeted so far.

“We are now on all the fringes of Barawe town. There is no resistance, but our forces are now going into the heart of the town,” Abdirizak Khalif, Somalia’s deputy military commander said.

He was talking on the outskirts of Barawe, after soldiers in trucks, tanks and armoured vehicles had surrounded the town which lies about 180km south of Mogadishu.

Barawe had been fully controlled by the Islamist militia with almost no government presence since 2006. Al Shabab banned many aspects of modern life in the town, and applied its strict literal interpretation of Sharia, ordering executions, floggings and amputations for crimes such as theft.

Al Shabab ruled most of the southern region of Somalia from 2006 until 2011, when African troops marched into the capital.

On Saturday Al Shabab militants ambushed and burnt two government vehicles approaching Barawe, Shaikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al Shabab’s military operation spokesman, said on Sunday.

He declined to comment on whether the Islamist militants had abandoned the town.

Al Shabab was destabilised badly after it lost the southern port of Kismayo to AU and Somali government soldiers in September 2012. The group had controlled the port since 2007, and charged taxes to ships that sailed or docked from its shores, raising revenues to expand its military campaign.