Daily News Channel
Described as the largest single gathering of displaced residents in the world today, tens of thousands of civilians are seeking shelter along the Afgooye corridor outside Mogadishu, according to the United Nations. Fighting between government forces and Islamist militias has triggered the flight of more than 67,000 Somalis in and around Mogadishu since May 8, the U.N
Somalia needs international help to fight Islamist extremists battling for power in the lawless Horn of Africa nation, the country’s moderate Islamist president said Monday.
Just last month, Western donors gathered in Brussels to pledge money to the new Somali government of Sheik Sharif Ahmed, in the hope that he could restore order and put an end to the offshore piracy that has plagued shipping off his country’s coastline. But renewed fighting in and around Mogadishu has raised fears that Somalia’s 15th government in 18 years is about to fail.
Some of the worst fighting to hit Somalia’s capital city in recent months uprooted nearly 34,000 people in less than a week, according to a United Nations report released Monday.
Mortar rounds slammed into Somali parliament on Saturday, killing at least six people and injuring 15, sources in Mogadishu told CNN.
A roadside bomb attack Thursday in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, injured the nation’s interior minister and killed one of his secretaries, according to a source close to the minister. The mid-day attack on Abdukadir Ali Omar, a member of the transitional government, left him with shrapnel wounds to his leg. The extent of his injuries was unclear, said the source, who requested anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the media
Somali President Sharif Sheikh Hassan said Saturday he will give in to a rebel demand that he impose Islamic law, or sharia, in an effort to halt fighting between Somali forces and Islamic insurgents. However, Hassan told a news conference he won’t agree to a strict interpretation of the law, which forbids girls from attending school, requires veils for women and beards for men, and bans music and television. The president, speaking at his palace in the capital, Mogadishu, said local elders and religious leaders, acting as liaisons with the militants, brought him a message saying the rebels wanted a truce in the two-year-old fighting.