April 1, 2016 | Morning Headlines
Two Killed, 15 Injured In Central Somalia Mosque Blast
31 March – Source: Reuters – 187 Words
Two people were killed and 15 others wounded when an explosion ripped through a mosque in the central Somalia region of Hiiraan during evening prayers on Thursday, police said. Local residents and police said it was unlikely that militants would target a mosque and thought the blast in the central town of Beledweyne was probably an accident. “We believe it was grenade that was accidentally dropped by those who were praying,” a senior police officer, who gave his name only as Ibrahim, told Reuters from a police station near the scene.
Six people, including two Turkish nationals, were gunned down in the capital Mogadishu on Wednesday and a suicide bomber blew up an official in Puntland earlier on Thursday. Beledweyne residents shared the view that the mosque blast was likely an accident. “The mosque was not attacked but it was an accident. We have not seen mosques being attacked. If it was deliberate, all could be killed easily. There was no gunfire,” said Ahmed Nur, a local elder. Neither Somalia’s Al-Shabaab militants nor any other group has claimed responsibility for the blast.
Key Headlines
- Two Killed 15 Injured In Central Somalia Mosque Blast (Reuters)
- Somali Government Pledges Extra 1.2 Million Dollars For Drought (Goobjoog News)
- Liido Seafood Restaurant Re-opens After Al-Shabaab Attack (Radio Dalsan)
- African Troops Strengthen Attacks Against Al-Shabaab (Presna Latina)
- In Somaliland Authorities Order Newspaper To Close Down (CPJ)
- Al-Shabaab Child Soldiers Captured In Somalia Firefight (CNN)
- Rivers Turn To Dust As Drought Bites Somalia (Digital Journal)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Somali Government Pledges Extra 1.2 Million Dollars For Drought
31 March -Source: Goobjoog News – 113 Words
Somali Federal cabinet has on this Thursday announced an additional $1.291 million dollars to help drought stricken communities in the country. The additional $1.291 Million Dollars including the other 1 million dollars pledged by the government last week will become the first money to be used for helping drought hit areas in the country. The money will be deducted from the salaries of government employees, says the cabinet. Several regions in the country are experiencing difficult drought situation. Severe water shortage and pasture threatens hundred of nomads and rural communities in several regions of the country. Humanitarian agencies in Somalia have also appealed for $105 million to cope with the drought situation in the country
Liido Seafood Restaurant Re-opens After Al-Shabaab Attack
31 March – Source: Radio Dalsan – 96 Words
Indian ocean seaside beach hotel that was attacked by armed Al-Shabaab on January has re-opened its doors. Several people have attended the reopening ceremony on Thursday evening in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Free seafood and drinks were offered to the participants and members of the public who attended the re-opening event. They told Radio Dalsan that they are once again excited to be part of the customers of the seafood restaurant despite the horror months ago. Over 20 were killed when armed group attacked the busy restaurant on the night of January 21st, others were also wounded.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
African Troops Strengthen Attacks Against Al-Shabaab
31 March – Source: Prensa Latina – 99 Words
Sam Okiding, Commander of the Section One of the Mission of the African Union in Somalia (Amisom) said that his troops will strengthen the attacks on the anti-governmental group Al-Shabaab. In a communiqué, Okiding said that Amisom forces were well trained to fight that armed group seeking to guarantee peace in Somalia. Al-Shabaab is a Somali organization successor to the Union of Islamic Courts, expelled in 2006 from Mogadiscio by Amisom troops. Al-Shabaab, which seeks to overthrow the government, is targeted in the south by an offensive staged by the Somali Army and the Amisom troops.
In Somaliland, Authorities Order Newspaper To Close Down
31 March – Source: Committee to Protect Journalists – 555 Words
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland to reopen the daily Codka Shacabka (The Voice of the People). The attorney general’s office issued an order March 24 for the privately owned paper to immediately cease publication, according to human rights campaigners.
Guleid Ahmed Jama, chairman of the local advocacy group, Human Rights Centre, told CPJ the attorney general’s order said the newspaper had not been properly registered after it was taken over by new owners. The new owners are a group of journalists, who are known to be critical of the government, but are not affiliated with any political party. The newspaper’s editor, Jama Adam, told CPJ the new owners took over a few weeks ago.
Jama Adam told CPJ he did not think the decision had anything to do with a particular article or subject the paper had covered, and said he viewed it as part of a wider campaign by the government to limit new voices and control the media. He said he did not apply for a license because authorities have not issued any since 2011.
The attorney general’s office, which is responsible for issuing licenses to newspaper owners, also cited registration violations when ordering the privately owned newspapers, Hubsad and XogOgaal, to close in recent months. The closures come as the region begins preparing for elections, scheduled to take place in March 2017.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“My interviewers from the security services told me that a lot of these kids were abducted. They didn’t join Al-Shabaab voluntarily. They were taken on their way to school or they were indoctrinated and forced to fight. It’s unacceptable. Kids should be in school, playing and being children. Not fighting and dying. They are losing their innocence and this is not acceptable,” President Abdiweli Ali ‘Gaas’ said.
Al-Shabaab Child Soldiers Captured In Somalia Firefight
31 March – Source: CNN – 1,343 Words
They came in from the beach, getting out of the wooden dhows they’d seized from fisherman around the Horn of Africa. Hundreds of Al-Shabaab fighters descended on the shores of Puntland, a semi-autonomous state in Somalia. Their shirts hung baggy, combat fatigues stolen from African Union forces clad over thin arms and legs. While an estimated 200-300 were killed in firefights in Puntland and its neighboring region of Galmudug, Puntland’s President Abdiweli Gaas tells CNN that up to 100 of them surrendered and dropped their weapons when they realized they were overpowered.
The mid-March attack was highly unusual, coming from the sea and outside Al-Shabaab’s typical areas of operation. But most unusual of all was the size of these recruits. These were not the heroic, terrifying jihadist killers Al-Shabaab has depicted in its various propaganda videos and pictures. Many of the children have battle wounds from previous fights that have yet to heal, interrogators told a CNN security source.The young fighters have admitted to being part of previous Al-Shabaab attacks, such as a recent deadly attack on a Kenyan African Union base in southern Somalia. Some of the boys say many more like them are in the Al-Shabaab ranks.
Most of the young fighters are also dressed in combat fatigues, some with small-sized T-shirts underneath. Investigators believe, CNN is told, that these combat fatigues were stolen, along with weapons, artillery and ammunition from African Union troops. In the pictures the boys are shown drinking milk provided by the Puntland Security Services. One Western diplomat told CNN from Mogadishu that the concern is not only what to do with these boys, it is also how many of the young ones died in the days-long fighting. Gaas says they killed “a large number of fighters” but did not specify their age.
“We are worried as there is serious water scarcity around villages, and many people are now trekking long distances every day to fetch water from wells, said Ibrahim Adam, a resident in Jowhar, saying people were desperate for expected rains due in April to arrive.”
Rivers Turn To Dust As Drought Bites Somalia
31 March – Source: Digital Journal – 702 Words
Somalia’s breadbasket has become a dust bowl as the life-giving waters of the mighty Shabelle river run dry amid intense drought in the war-torn country. River-fed farmlands have become parched playgrounds for children who kick footballs beneath a cloudless sky, as one sign among many of the failed rains that the United Nations warns has put more than a million people at risk. Elders in the Lower and Middle Shabelle regions, where most people rely on farming for survival, said it is the first time in decades they have seen such water shortages in the river.
“I have never dreamt of finding myself walking inside the river,” said Adow Amin, a resident in Afgoye town, just outside the capital Mogadishu, an area famous for its banana production. “Can you imagine there is no water? The whole area looks like another place, I used to cross this river with a boat,” he said. Land here should be producing maize, bananas, sesame and other fruits and vegetables, with the once broad waters of the river a lifeline for thousands of Somali families.
“All the villages in the regions rely on water from the river to survive, there are very few wells here and I don’t think life is possible without the flow of water of the Shabelle River,” said Mohamed Idle, an elder in Jowhar district, of the more than a 1,000 kilometre (800 mile) long river that begins in Ethiopia’s highlands. “This is a nightmare. I never thought of this river running dry, I can see the riverbed and children playing,”said Abdulahi Mursal, another resident. “People will soon start leaving here.”
Floods and failed rains caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon have sparked a dramatic rise in the number of people going hungry in large parts of Africa, including in arid regions of the Horn of Africa. Northern Somali areas, including self-declared independent Somaliland along the Gulf of Aden and semi-autonomous Puntland, are especially hard hit, with some 385,000 people in dire need of food aid, according to the UN, with that figure feared to quadruple without help.