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/ 17 February 2008
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf escaped unharmed on Sunday when suspected Islamist insurgents hit his presidential compound in Mogadishu with mortar bombs for a second day, one of his aides said. Witnesses said the shelling wounded at least five people.
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/ 25 January 2008
Islamist insurgents briefly seized control of Somalia’s biggest military airfield on Friday and looted weapons, witnesses and an Islamist commander said. Muktar Ali Robow, leader of the al-Shabab rebel militia, told a local radio station his forces also captured government troops during the raid on Baledogle, about 100km west of the capital, Mogadishu.
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/ 21 January 2008
Somalia’s new government on Monday pledged to put an end to a crackdown against journalists in the Horn of Africa country and vowed to restore press freedoms. Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein made the promise as he was taking part in a national press freedom-day ceremony in the capital, Mogadishu.
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/ 17 January 2008
At least 13 people were killed and 75 wounded in heavy fighting in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Thursday in the latest confrontation between Ethiopian troops and Islamist-led insurgents, witnesses said. For more than a year, fighting has plunged the capital into bloodshed.
Somali gunmen kidnapped two Libyan diplomats in Mogadishu’s busy Bakara market on Saturday, a driver for the two men said. ”Ten men with pistols in their hands surrounded us. They seized the two diplomats and left with the car,” the driver, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisal, said.
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/ 28 December 2007
Islamist militia on Friday took control of a town in south-central Somalia after Ethiopian soldiers withdrew overnight, witnesses said. The Islamists, who briefly controlled much of south and central Somalia before they were ousted early this year, have since been waging near daily attacks against the joint forces.
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/ 26 December 2007
Gunmen threw grenades at the home of the regional police chief in south-western Somalia, killing two of his grandchildren and a bodyguard while he escaped injury, authorities said on Tuesday. Seven other family members were wounded in the Monday-night attack, which police said was a failed assassination attempt.
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/ 24 December 2007
A first contingent of 100 peacekeepers from Burundi deployed in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Sunday, hours after fighting between Islamist rebels and government forces killed at least four people. The arrival of the soldiers marked the first phase of long-delayed support for 1 600 Ugandan troops.
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/ 15 December 2007
A roadside bomb wounded at least 12 Somali soldiers in Baidoa and two people were killed in violence in Mogadishu on Saturday. The attacks in the capital and the south-central town hosting Somalia’s Parliament came after two days of fighting in Mogadishu between allied Somali-Ethiopian forces and Islamist insurgents.
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/ 13 December 2007
At least 13 Somalis died on Thursday, including 11 in almost simultaneous mortar blasts, as Mogadishu’s civilian population continued to bear the brunt of relentless fighting. ”The explosion cut people into pieces and splashed blood on the market stalls. We’re not sure where the mortar came from,” said a witness.
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/ 10 December 2007
Back-to-back bloody clan battles in Somalia — now spanning 16 years and worsened by nearly a year of insurgency — have wiped out basic services in Mogadishu, where the latest clashes on Sunday claimed the life of a civilian and wounded three others.
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/ 2 December 2007
Somalia’s new prime minister called on Sunday for dialogue with Islamist-led opponents to end an insurgency that a rights group says has killed nearly 6 000 civilians so far this year. In some of his first public comments on the conflict, Somalia’s new prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, said he was open to talks.
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/ 24 November 2007
Insurgents fired a barrage of mortars into an Ethiopian army camp in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Friday, triggering heavy fighting, residents said. The clashes shattered a fortnight lull in the city after weeks of heavy fighting that had claimed dozens of lives, mainly of civilians, and displaced at least 200 000 people.
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/ 20 November 2007
The number of Somalis uprooted by fighting in their own country has hit a ”staggering” one million, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said 600 000 people are believed to have fled Somalia’s lawless capital, Mogadishu, since February.
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/ 12 November 2007
Somali and Ethiopian troops shut down Mogadishu’s main market in a search for Islamist insurgents on Sunday after fighting that has killed at least 60 people and driven tens of thousands from the Somali capital. Rights groups have criticised the Ethiopians for failing to distinguish between civilian and insurgent targets.
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/ 11 November 2007
The toll from some of the worst fighting in Somalia’s war-wracked capital climbed to 59 on Saturday, as thousands fled the city fearing more clashes between Ethiopian forces and rebels, witnesses said. Residents recovered bullet-riven bodies, ripped limbs and shattered skulls on the blood-streaked streets.
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/ 10 November 2007
Ethiopian troops shelled suspected Islamist hideouts on Friday in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where some of the worst clashes in months have left at least 43 dead in two days, many of them civilians. The escalating violence came as the Ethiopian army tried to flush out pockets of insurgents in southern districts of the Somali capital.
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/ 9 November 2007
A bloody day of fighting on the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, left at least 51 people dead in one of the goriest 24 hours the city has seen in months, residents and hospital sources said on Friday. Ethiopian troops backing the fledgling Somali government fought insurgents in an up-close battle.
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/ 9 November 2007
Corpses were scattered on Mogadishu streets on Friday after overnight fighting between Somali insurgents and Ethiopian troops that killed 12 people. The bodies of the dead could be seen in the city’s northern Sqa Holaha neighbourhood, where insurgents dragged dead Ethiopians through the streets on Thursday.
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/ 8 November 2007
Civilians dragged the body of an Ethiopian soldier through the streets of Somalia’s capital on Thursday after fighting with insurgents killed a second soldier and civilian, witnesses said. In the grisly incident, more than 100 civilians stepped and spat on the scarred body as they dragged it for several kilometres on a pot-holed asphalt road.
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/ 6 November 2007
Hundreds of families were on Tuesday fleeing their homes in Somalia’s southern region of Lower Shabelle, where floods swept villages and destroyed crops, residents and witnesses said. Local elder Abdi Omar Hirabe said floods engulfed the villages of War Gedow, Malable and Dolo Dhere.
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/ 5 November 2007
Two large blasts aimed at a convoy of Ethiopian troops heading toward the capital prompted soldiers to open fire on Monday. At least two Somalis were shot to death, witnesses said. The explosions south of Mogadishu could be heard a kilometre away, and ”shook all the buildings nearby”, resident Mohamed Ahmed said.
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/ 2 November 2007
Battles broke out again in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Friday killing at least one, wounding four and stoking the nation’s humanitarian crisis after nearly 90 000 people fled days of fighting earlier this week. Ethiopian forces supporting Somalia’s interim government are trying to crush Islamist-led rebels.
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/ 30 October 2007
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed called crisis talks on Tuesday to find a new prime minister as the country’s shaky government faced a mounting challenge from Islamist rebels.
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/ 28 October 2007
Hundreds of families fled Mogadishu on Sunday following an upsurge in violence pitting Islamist insurgents against Somali security forces and Ethiopian troops, it was reported. The latest bout of fighting in the Somali capital appeared to have prompted a fresh wave of displacement.
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/ 23 October 2007
Somali authorities on Tuesday released the local head of the World Food Programme, who was seized nearly a week ago when government forces stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu. "He is safely back in the office. He was brought by some government officers as well as local UN staffers," a UN official said in Mogadishu.
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/ 19 October 2007
Somali government forces on Friday battled Islamist insurgents in southern Mogadishu, killing two civilians, witnesses said. Rival forces pounded each other with heavy artillery, forcing many residents to remain indoors while others fled to safety, they said.
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/ 17 October 2007
Up to 60 Somali intelligence officers stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu on Wednesday and seized the World Food Programme’s local chief of operations at gunpoint. WFP said it was forced to suspend food distribution, which started on Monday, to more than 75 000 people in the capital Mogadishu.
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/ 11 October 2007
A suicide bomber drove a pickup truck filled with explosives into a Somali army base, killing himself and two others near a hotel where the prime minister set up temporary headquarters, officials said on Thursday. The explosion late on Wednesday, in the southern town of Baidoa, targeted a base manned mostly by Ethiopian troops.
A key Somali Islamist leader on Tuesday called for jihad, or holy war, vowing that a bloody insurgency against the Ethiopian-backed government in Mogadishu would end only with the return of Islamic law. ”What we want is to free our country from Christian colonisers — by this I mean Ethiopia,” said Sheikh Mukhtar Robow.
Somalia’s prime minister has reached a truce with Mogadishu’s dominant clan, some of whose fighters had supported Islamist-led insurgents in battles with government troops and Ethiopian forces earlier this year. Hawiye clan elders met Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi amid tight security on Monday in the capital, which has been rocked by insecurity since January.
Gunmen released a cargo plane and its Russian crew that had been hijacked in northern Somalia, authorities said on Friday. Muse Gelle Yusuf, the governor of the northern Bari region where the plane was taken on Thursday, said that clan elders had managed to convince the two young gunmen to release the plane and its cargo.