This video from the USA is called Thousands of Somalis Protest Deadly US Air Strike.
From Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu, Somalia):
Somalia: Educators Oppose U.S. Military Involvement to Country
10 March 2010
Some of the Somali educators in abroad have Wednesday opposed the US military involvement to Somalia, just days after the Americans said they will take part [in] the military operation that the transitional government planning to take over the control of the Somali capital Mogadishu.
The Somali educators said that there will no be any solution for the Somali people if the US government tries to take part [in] the operation of the transitional government for the power struggle and control of Mogadishu.
Eng. Idiris Hassan Farah, one of the Somali educators in Finland said in an interview with Shabelle radio that there will no be any solution for a bombardment conducted in Somalia that causes more casualties of deaths and injuries.
“Any kind of bombardment or airstrike in Somalia that conducts the warplanes of the US government will not bring any solution or benefits for Somalia. It will only be great problems and unfortunate for the Somalis about what the Americans are thinking,” said eng. Idiris
The officials said that the US will not provide to Somalia more than those they supported to the transitional government of Somalia led by the president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed reiterating that they will only cause other great dangers to the Somali people.
The Somali educators lastly called for the Somalis to come together and talk to reach peace agreement to end the conflict between those who are fighting saying that more people will die if the fighting continues further in Somalia.
The statement of the Somali educators in abroad comes as the transitional government president Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed held press conference in London on Tuesday and vowed that they will quickly start their planned offensive against the Islamist rebels to take over whole control of the Somali capital Mogadishu.
AFRICOM’s First War: U.S. Directs Large-Scale Offensive In Somalia: here.
Somali mercenary military training in Tsavo National Park, Kenya: here.
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Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu)
Somalia: Fighting, Shelling Restarts, Injuries Five Civilians in Mogadishu
11 March 2010
Heavy fighting with shelling between the transitional government troops and Islamist forces has restarted in parts of the Somali capital Mogadishu, just days after heavy fighting continued in the capital that left more lives in the north of the capital.
The clash restarted at the neighborhoods of Abdal Aziz district in north of Mogadishu where fighting bitterly continued on Wednesday afternoon according to witnesses in the areas where the sound of heavy shelling gunfire could be heard on Thursday morning.
One of the residents in the areas told shabelle radio that the people in the areas had great fears of the fighting between the two sides and the possibility to spread it further in the other areas in the district of Abdul aziz pointing out that Berhani areas where the most flashpoint zones that the warring sides exchanged the heavy gunfire.
5 people were injured, 4 of them wounded in a same house at Bakara market as many several mortar shells landed there as there was no fighting going on there.
More people fleeing from their houses in Mogadishu could be seen running to the other save areas in the capital as there had been violence and mortar shells in the north over the past two days and the latest reports say that the clashes was yet continuing.
We shall keep updating you for any further details about the news as soon as possible.
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UN News Service (New York)
Somalia: Safety of Uprooted Somalis Key Concern for UN Refugee Agency
12 March 2010
The United Nations refugee agency today expressed its deep concern for the safety of more than 8,000 people trapped in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, by clashes which have uprooted more than 100,000 people since the start of the year.
Some 8,300 people who do not have the means to get out of the capital remain displaced in Mogadishu, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“As the fighting rages on, aid agencies cannot access and assist these extremely vulnerable IDPs [internally displaced persons],” agency spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told reporters in Geneva.
Characterizing the clashes in both the capital and other parts of the Horn of Africa nation as “relentless and indiscriminate,” UNHCR said the situation for civilians continues to deteriorate.
The latest round of violence between Government forces and Al-Shabaab militia is concentrated in Mogadishu’s northern suburbs.
Since last month, 33,000 people have escaped violence in the capital, with nearly half fleeing to the Afgooye corridor, a stretch of road 30 kilometres from Mogadishu, joining nearly 366,000 other IDPs who are sheltering there.
Neighbouring Kenya has also witnessed an influx of refugees, with 10,000 new Somali refugees having been registered in the first nine weeks of 2010 alone.
Mr. Mahecic said that with violence persisting in Somalia, UNHCR fears that the Dabaab refugee complex in northern Kenya, already home to 270,000 refugees, could see a spike in arrivals.
Somalia, the agency said, continues to be among the countries generating the highest number of displaced people and refugees, with over 1.4 million IDPs and more than 560,000 refugees.
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
Somalia: Without Food and Unable to Bury the Dead in Mogadishu
15 March 2010
Nairobi — Five days of fighting in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, have left residents without food, cut off from their homes and unable to bury their dead, civil society leaders in the city said.
“We cannot go to some of the worst-affected areas and for all we know people may be buried under the rubble of what used to be their homes,” Asha Sha’ur, a civil society activist, told IRIN. The fighting had displaced hundreds of families, she added.
In many areas of the city, people were unable to access their homes or even bury their dead. The fighting had also cut off aid deliveries.
“What little assistance that used to come in is no longer there, so they [civilians] are on their own,” Sha’ur added. “It is a tragedy but no one seems to care. Imagine people with small children unable to go out and buy food or milk.”
Ali Sheikh Yassin, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organization (EHRO), told IRIN the fighting between government troops and insurgent which began on 9 March “had been the most intense since May 2009”.
Local sources estimate that more than 100 people had died before relative calm returned to the city on 15 March. “I would say this was the worst [fighting],” Yassin told IRIN.
Some residents, he added, had ventured out of their homes on 15 March to assess the damage and bury their dead.
“There is a feeling among the population that this is not the end and worse is yet to come,” he said. Both sides, he explained, were mobilizing, with tanks belonging to the African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission (AMISOM) dotting the city.
A medical source said the hospitals had been inundated. “We are barely coping,” she told IRIN. “When you think there are no more, more are brought in.”
On the move
The fighting, between AMISOM-backed government forces and the Islamist group Al-Shabab, broke out when Al-Shabab fighters attacked government positions in north Mogadishu, a local journalist told IRIN.
“By Friday [12 March], the fighting had spread to most parts of north Mogadishu. The Yaqshid, Karan, Abdiasis and Wardhigley districts were the hardest hit,” he added.
By 15 March, hundreds of families were on the move, “taking advantage of the break in the shelling”. According to the journalist, many were joining those in the Afgoye corridor – already home to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people – while others were heading to Balad, 30km north of Mogadishu.
While the death toll was more than 100, another 245 people were injured, the medical source said.
“These are the ones we can account for; there may be many more who are unaccounted for,” she said. “I am sure that once we have access to the epicentre of the fighting the death toll will be much higher.”
Most of the injured, she said, were children, citing the case of Salado Ali in Medina, Mogadishu’s main hospital. Her six-year-old son and husband were injured when their home in the northern Karan district was hit by a shell.
“The doctors have removed the pieces from the boy’s stomach,” she told IRIN by telephone. “They tell me he is stable.”
Salado, whose husband was in another wing of the hospital with a less serious injury, said: “I don’t think there is anyone left in our neighbourhood.”
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
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Nairobi Star (Nairobi)
Kenya: Nation Stuck With Somali ‘Mercenaries’
Abdilatif Maalim
19 March 2010
Nairobi — An estimated 2,500 Somali youths trained by Kenya to fight in Somalia are stranded at Archer’s Post in Isiolo, The Star has established.
A report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia which was presented to the UN Security Council indicates the youths, majority of them from the Ogaden clan, started receiving training early last year at the request of President Sheikh Shariff under the auspices of his then Minister of Defence Mohamed Abdi Mohammed “Gandhi”.
“Kenya hosted the programme and Ethiopia has been closely involved.
Approximately 2,500 youths were recruited by clan elders and commissioned agents both from within Somalia (exclusively the Juba Valley) and Northeastern Kenya, including the Daadab refugee camp,” states the UN report.
The Star established that the youths cannot be deployed to Somalia as there was a stalemate between Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia about where they would be most useful.
While the Kenyan security forces want to have the youths deployed in the southern Somali regions of Juba and Gedo to create a buffer zone with the militant Al Shabaab, Ethiopia and the Somalia transitional government want them sent to Mogadishu to help repulse the Al Shabaab who have taken control of large parts of the capital.
Somalia President Sheikh Shariff later fell out with his Defence minister Mohamed Ghandi, an Ogadeni, whom he suspected of pushing for the deployment of the youths in Juba and Gedo to not only fight the Al Shabaab but also lay the foundation for the establishment of an Ogaden autonomous region.
Ethiopia’s fears the deployment of the contingent in Ogaden might bolster and give the Ogaden National Liberation Front a launching pad for its attacks against Ethiopia.
The Ogaden clan live in the central Ogaden plateau of Ethiopia, the North Eastern Province of Kenya, and the Jubaland region of Southern Somalia. In Kenya, the Ogadeni have served the government in key positions since independence.
Yesterday Somalia Ambassador to Kenya, Mohamed Ali Nur, confirmed there was a stalemate in the deployment process. He could not comment further “because the issue is sensitive.” “The government of Somalia will very soon address that. I am not an authority on this matter. I can’t talk about it, but I have heard the reports of the former Somali Defence minister meeting with Somali elders in Nairobi on the deployment issue,” said Ali Nur.
The Ministry of Foreign Affair spokesman Egara Kabaji denied the UN report that Kenya was training the youths to support Somalia transitional government. He denied the existence of the such a contingent anywhere in the country, Kabaji said the only training that the government was involved in was in accordance with an agreement between the EU and Kenya in which Kenya offered to train policemen for the Somalia government.
“The last time we trained Somali police officers was in 2006, when we trained 200 VIP protection police officers. But even as we speak there is a plan between Kenya and the EU to train Somali policemen,” said Kabaji.
However, according to the UN report: “In December 2009, the Kenyan Minister for security, George Saitoti, reportedly confirmed to foreign diplomats the existence of Jubaland policy which is intended to establish a ‘buffer zone’ bordering Kenya in the Juba Valley.” Yesterday Parliament’s departmental committee of Foreign Affairs said they will in the next 10 days table a report on the recruitment in the House. Committee chairman Aden Keynan said the matter had serious consequences for security in the region.
“The issue we have been dealing with is about recruitment of the youth which the committee has concluded its investgigations,” said Keynan.
According to the UN report, two training centres were established at the Kenya Wildlife Service training camp at Manyani, and near Archer’s Post in Isiolo.
“A total of 36 Somali officers were recruited to assist in the training under the command of a General Abdi Mahdi and Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail ‘Fartaag’. The officers completed one-month training in September 2009”.
The youths under the command of General Mahdi, a former Somali warlord, were supposed to be deployed on February 16, 2010 immediately after they completed their training.
They have been at the training camps since then waiting for their deployment.
Yesterday security analysts were fearful that if the squad is allowed back into the communities it would pose a grave security risk. A few of the trainees escaped from the camp when they received reports they might be deployed to Mogadishu to fight the Al-Shabaab militants.
One of the Kenyan Somali trainers who sought anonymity told the Star that he and other trainers have not been paid since the programme started last September.
The youths who were each promised a salary of $150 (Sh11,400) a month after recruitment had also not been paid.
Last Tuesday the former Somalia Defence minister Mohamed Ghandi hosted elders from the Marehan and Ogaden clans to brief them on the training and deployment plans. The meeting, held at Chester House, Nairobi, also discussed the possibility of the two clans withdrawing their support to the Somali government.
Sources at the meeting said Ghandi assured the elders that the youths will be deployed in the Gedo and Juba region as he had initially planned when he was still Minister.
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