Somalia's Shebab leader outlines plans for East Africa terror expansion

Mogadishu (Somalia)

The leader of Somalia's Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab rebels on Friday issued an Eid message calling for a wave of new recruits in order to "lift the pain of Muslims" across East Africa.

 In a statement that underscored the group's ambition to expand its operations, Shebab leader Ahmed Diriye, also known as Ahmed Umar Abu Ubaidah, took aim at Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Uganda.

 "The sword of the Mujahedeen is drawn and attacks against the enemy are ongoing countrywide and we are calling them to increase their attacks on the infidels," he said in a statement posted on an Islamist website.

 "We say to our beloved brothers living in territories under Kenyan colonisation that your brothers will never stop coming to your assistance," he said.

 "You have to know that Jihad is the only way you can free yourselves from the oppression and humiliation you are now facing, so rush and join in the Jihad... and liberate your territories from the Christians."

 Diriye praised the April massacre at Garissa university in northeastern Kenya, in which four Shebab gunmen killed 148 people, most of them students. The attackers were mostly Muslims from Kenya.

 "We congratulate you and the rest of the Muslims in the world on the heroic Garissa university operation," the Shebab leader said, saying the massacre was retaliation for "organised extrajudicial killings against clerics and kidnappings of Islamic youth" along Kenya's Muslim-majority coastline.