Insurgents fired mortars at a plane that was due to take Somalia’s president to Djibouti, but he was unharmed and travelled to a meeting with a United Nations security council delegation, officials said on Sunday. President Abdullahi Yusuf was due to meet the delegation in Djibouti, where his interim government and opposition exiles are participating in peace talks.
The death toll from a fierce clash sparked by an Islamist insurgent attack on a Ugandan base in Mogadishu rose to 18 on Tuesday, witnesses and officials said. Late on Monday, a large group of insurgents attacked a major base in the Somali capital housing a Ugandan contingent of African Union peacekeepers.
There is ”no solution but war” to solve Somalia’s problems, and Somali Islamists must re-arm and fight, a long-time hard-line Islamist leader linked to al-Qaeda said on Monday. In a rare interview, Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki urged the United Nations not to send soldiers to shore up an African Union peacekeeping force.
Somali pirates have released a Jordanian-flagged cargo ship hijacked last week off the lawless coast of the Horn of Africa nation, a shipping agent said on Friday. The Victoria, owned by a United Arab Emirates company, was carrying 4 200 tonnes of sugar in humanitarian aid sent from Denmark to the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Somali gunmen kidnapped two Italian aid workers on Wednesday in the latest abduction of foreigners in the Horn of Africa country, officials and residents said. One official said the abducted Italians were a man and a woman. One resident said a Somali aid worker was also seized in the town of Awdigle south of the capital Mogadishu.
Clashes between Ethiopian troops and Islamist insurgents have killed more than a dozen people in southern and central regions of Somalia, residents said. Islamist fighters, opposed to Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia to support its interim government, ambushed a convoy of Ethiopian forces in the central Hiraan region on Wednesday.
Security forces on Monday killed at least five people in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, as they cracked down on riots sparked by rising food prices and record inflation, witnesses said. At least 20 000 people were out on the streets to demonstrate as anger grew at printers of fake money and unscrupulous traders.
Thousands of Somalis protested in Mogadishu’s streets on Monday, angry at food traders refusing to take old currency notes that have been blamed for spiralling inflation, witnesses said. ”The whole city is up in smoke,” said protester Hussein Abdikadir.
Somali Islamist militants on Friday promised to avenge the killing of a man said to be an al-Qaeda’s chief, warning citizens from countries they considered hostile to stay away from the war-torn country. The United States military on Thursday killed Moalim Aden Hashi Ayro and 11 others when it bombed a house in Somalia’s central town of Dhusamareb.
A United States air strike killed an Islamist commander thought to be al-Qaeda’s leader in Somalia and at least a dozen other people on Thursday, the insurgents and witnesses said. Aden Hashi Ayro died in the latest of several US bombings in recent months to have targeted Somali rebel leaders.
Ethiopian troops allied to Somalia’s shaky government shot dead 13 civilians after an explosion killed two soldiers on Wednesday, witnesses in south-western Somalia said. Witness Mohamud Ahmed Nur said what appeared to be a remote-controlled land mine hit the Ethiopian troops patrolling Baidoa town and killed two soldiers.
Militias allied to the Somali government recaptured a southern port from Islamists on Tuesday, taking the death toll from an upsurge of fighting in recent days to nearly 100, witnesses said. The militias recaptured Guda town, which had been taken by the Islamists’ militant al-Shabaab wing on Monday.
Corpses lay on the streets of Mogadishu on Monday after at least 81 people were killed in battles over the weekend between Islamist-led insurgents and Ethiopian troops supporting Somalia’s interim government. Northern districts of the coastal capital suffered the worst of the most intense fighting for months.
Clashes between insurgents and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops killed 81 people in Mogadishu in one day, a prominent local human rights group said on Sunday. ”Eighty-one people were killed and 119 more were wounded in the violence in Mogadishu since Saturday,” Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairperson of the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, said.
Somali Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian troops exchanged mortar fire on Sunday in some of the heaviest clashes in months with at least 20 people killed in the last 24 hours, residents and witnesses said. The fighting was fiercest in the Islamist stronghold of northern Mogadishu.
Police in Somalia have released five journalists and allowed their radio station to resume broadcasting, members of staff said on Friday. The Radio Voice Peace journalists were released overnight hours after they were detained for the station’s coverage of an attack on Wednesday night by Islamist insurgents in Mogadishu’s KM4 neighbourhood.
A British schoolteacher, her two female Kenyan colleagues and a Somali headmaster were killed in an overnight attack in central Somalia blamed on Islamist insurgents, witnesses said on Monday. The four were killed when suspected rebels attacked and briefly took control of Beledweyne, the capital of Somalia’s Hiraan region.
Islamist fighters in Somalia seized a strategic town north of Mogadishu on Wednesday for the second time in a fortnight, a spokesperson for the insurgents said. Jowhar is the most significant of several towns the rebels have captured in recent months, highlighting the inability of the Western-backed interim government to impose its authority.
Somali officials on Monday urged tough action against pirates holding a French yacht after an elite French army unit was placed on standby to intervene if negotiations failed. The local governor in Somalia’s breakaway northern region of Puntland, Musa Ghelle Yusuf, said he would be "happy … to see the pirates killed".
At least four people were killed on Thursday in south-western Somalia when Islamist insurgents raided a hotel where a governor was staying, a local elder said. The attack occurred in Qasahdere, 335km south-west of the capital, Mogadishu, where Bay region governor Abdufatah Mohamed Ibrahim and other government officials were lodged in a hotel.
Somali Islamists on Monday took control of a central town after clashes with government forces that left 11 people dead, residents and Islamists said. The Islamists wrested control of Buulo Burte town, 206km north of the capital, Mogadishu, they said.
Hospitals in Mogadishu overflowed with the wounded on Sunday and the death toll from mortar strikes on the city’s sprawling main market reached at least 17. Scores of civilians at the Bakara Market were hurt on Saturday when troops positioned at the Villa Somalia presidential palace returned fire against Islamist insurgents who attacked it with mortar bombs, witnesses said.
At least 11 people were killed in Mogadishu on Saturday when troops at the Villa Somalia presidential palace returned fire against Islamist insurgents who attacked it with mortar bombs, witnesses said. President Abdullahi Yusuf was there at the time, an aide told Reuters, but no one in the hilltop compound was hurt.
Somalis uprooted by fighting in Mogadishu looted trucks carrying United Nations food aid on Friday, peacekeepers said, highlighting what relief agencies warn is a fast deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe. Somalia now has one million internal refugees, aid workers say, and their numbers are swelled by an exodus of about 20 000 civilians each month.
Somalia’s Islamist insurgents vowed on Thursday to launch more hit-and-run attacks against the government, saying their tactics were designed to reduce civilian casualties. Islamist fighters briefly seized the town of Jowhar, north of Mogadishu, on Wednesday, highlighting the interim government’s inability to assert its authority.
Four Somali soldiers and two civilians were killed on Wednesday when Islamist fighters raided a key southern town, sparking clashes, officials and a local resident said. The Islamists briefly took control of Jowhar township, 90km north of the capital Mogadishu, looted government vehicles and offices and released prisoners.
At least five people, including a child, were killed on Sunday in a new wave of violence in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, witnesses said. ”I saw armed men opening fire at policemen at Debka interception. Three policemen and a doctor who worked in a clinic nearby were killed,” witness Farah Hasan Sahal said in southern Mogadishu.
Battles erupted in Somalia’s capital on Wednesday between Islamist rebels and Ethiopian troops backing the government a day after the United Nations said it was still too dangerous to send peacekeepers there. Witnesses in northern Mogadishu said three Ethiopian soldiers and at least one insurgent were killed as both sides traded heavy fire.
Three children were killed and another wounded on Tuesday in southern Somalia when the grenade they were playing with exploded, witnesses and medical sources said. The three were part of a group of young goat herders who had found an unused hand grenade near a small village south-west of the capital, Mogadishu.
At least nine people were killed and 18 wounded in central Somalia when two clans fought on Monday over land, hospital and local officials said. The fighting erupted between the Sa’ad and Dir sub-clans over disputed land in Galkaio town in central Somalia, said Bile Mohamud Qabowsade, a government official.
Islamist insurgents cut off the heads of three Somali soldiers south of the capital on Thursday and the United Nations special envoy said he would try to set up peace talks between the opposition and government. It was the first case of beheadings since the government and its Ethiopian military allies ousted the Islamists from power in late 2006.
Hundreds of residents of a remote town in southern Somalia staged an anti-American demonstration on Tuesday after the United States launched an air strike against ”a known al-Qaeda terrorist” there. The town of Dobley was hit by two missiles on Monday in the fourth US strike in 14 months against Somalia.