The officer, Osman Abdullahi, told the Somali national news agency that the two arrested Shabab operatives are Mukhtar Mohamed, who was head of intelligence for the group in the Galgadud region, and Aseyr Mohamed, who was in charge of tax collection.

Al-Shabab did not comment on the latest military operation in central Somalia, which came after an attack on a base of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia in Bula Marer, a town in southern Somalia, where the militants claimed to have killed more than 130 Ugandan soldiers on May 26.

(With UNI inputs)