June 17, 2016 | Morning Headlines
At least 15 Somali Migrants Suffocate In A Truck In Zambia
16 June – Source: Lusaka Times – 188 Words
Fifteen Somali nationals have died in a container truck in Zambia on the pedicle road in an apparent case of human trafficking gone wrong.
The Truck registered AFB 496 from Kasama was carrying over 50 Somalis suspected to be trafficked from Tanzania.The final destination of the victims remains unclear. The Truck was carrying bags of beans in front but had Somalis hidden at the back.
Apparently passers-by are said to have forced the driver to open the truck when they heard screams coming from the truck. At the scene, 20 kilometers from Levy Mwanawasa Bridge in Chembe, bodies of the victims were strewn on the ground. The over 30 survivors narrated that they were transferred from another truck at Kasama but the new truck had no ventilation, making their colleagues suffocate to death.
Copperbelt Police Commissioner Charity Katanga said officials stopped the truck in Luapula province after banging sounds were heard from the truck. The driver of the vehicle has been arrested. A Somali government spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Key Headlines
- At least 15 Somali Migrants Suffocate In A Truck In Zambia (Lusaka Times)
- Anti-Al-Shabaab Military Manoeuvres In Hudur District Of Bakool Region (Goobjoog News)
- Diarrhea Outbreak Kills Women And Children In Gedo (Shabelle News)
- Kenya Shuts Down Border With Somalia over Al-Shabaab Attack Fears (Radio Dalsan)
- Number Of Child Soldiers In Somalia May Top 5000 UN Reports (Voice of America)
- Texas City Where Cops Shot Walmart Hostage-taker Flooded With Refugees (WND)
- Bomb Scare At Canadian High Commission Over Visas (Associated Press)
- We Must Choose To Not Live In Terror (TIME)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Anti-Al-Shabaab Military Manoeuvres In Hudur District Of Bakool Region
16 June – Source: Goobjoog News – 114 Words
Somali National Army and AMISOM troops have kicked off operations against Al-Shabaab militants in villages around Hudur district in Bakool region of the South West state. No immediate confrontation or clashes with Al-Shabaab militants was reported but a search of Al-Shabaab units around Hudur continued smoothly according to the commissioner of Hudur district.
The commissioner, Mohammed Mo’alin, said the aim of the operation was to drive Al-Shabaab out of Bakool region: “Our aim is to drive this militant group out of Bakool region. Al-Shabaab is terrorist group that needs to be exterminated from our regions.” he allied forces continue their push against Al-Shabaab militants on several fronts across the country during this holy month of Ramadan.
Cholera Outbreak Kills Women And Children In Gedo
16 June – Source: Shabelle News – 141 Words
Reports from Gedo region indicate that at least 10 people, mostly underage children, have been admitted at Beled-Hawo town hospital following an outbreak of cholera. Dozens of other children were admitted in Beled-Hawo for the cholera, with the numbers of the affected people rising each day.
Most of the hospitalized came from the remote rural areas located in the outskirts of Beled-Hawo town, which lies near the Somalia border with Kenya. Women are said to be among those who succumbed to the cholera outbreak. The outbreak is directly linked to the poor sanitation and hygiene conditions in countryside villages. Meanwhile, the local authorities said they were conducting thorough investigations on the causes of the outbreak.
Kenya Shuts Down Border With Somalia over Al-Shabaab Attack Fears
June 16 – Source: Radio Dalsan – 181 Words
Kenyan authorities have reportedly shut down their border with Somalia along the towns of Mandera in Kenya and Beled Hawo of Somalia.
The move follows constant threats from Somali based armed group Al-Shabaab that has vowed to intensify attacks inside Somalia and the neighbouring Kenya during the holy month of Ramadan. As the result of the border closure, business and movement of people between the two countries has greatly been hampered.
Officials in the area say more than 4,000 Somali students who crossed the border every day to go to school on Kenyan side of Mandera have been affected. Equally traders from Mandera who ordinarily purchase goods from Somalia side are counting their losses. Eyewitness confirmed heavy Kenyan military presence and tanks patrolling along the border.
Armed group Al-Shabaab has carried wave of terror attacks inside Kenya since its military moved into Somalia on November 2011. President Uhuru Kenyatta has recently threatened to pull out his troops if the international community does not improve the welfare of AMISOM troops operating in Somalia.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Number Of Child Soldiers In Somalia May Top 5,000, UN Reports
17 June – Source: Voice of America – 300 Words
A top official with the U.N. Children’s Fund says there could be 5,000 child soldiers in Somalia as al-Shabab continues its recruiting campaigns.
In an interview with VOA Somali, Susannah Price, UNICEF chief of communication, said the recruitment and use of young children as soldiers was documented, and at surprisingly high numbers: “This is a very, very … disturbing situation,” Price said. “Indeed, there could be up to 5,000 child soldiers. We know that Al-Shabaab has a recruiting campaign for children sometimes involving persuasion. They may be giving money or food sometimes. The children in the [displaced persons] camps are an easy target.”
In the past, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 children — sometimes as young as 9 — were enlisted in the Somali armed forces, according to UNICEF. This came as the African continent on Thursday commemorated the Day of the African Child under the theme “Conflict and Crisis in Africa: Protecting All Children’s Rights.”
Somalia signed the UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), making Somalia the 195th state to ratify the convention. The ratification means that Somali children now have legally binding rights with the CRC, providing the framework for the government to promote and protect those rights. Price called on Somali leaders to prioritize the protection of children’s rights and the creation of a safer environment for Somali children.
Texas City Where Cops Shot Walmart Hostage-taker Flooded With Refugees
16 June – Source: WND – 1,120 Words
A man who took two co-workers hostage at an Amarillo, Texas, Walmart Tuesday was a Muslim refugee from Somalia, and that fact came as no surprise to those who track the federal government’s robust refugee resettlement program.
Amarillo is bursting at the seams with foreign refugees, from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and its mayor has pleaded repeatedly with the government to stop sending refugees to his city. But they keep coming. The schools are stretched, and the local police department is having a hard time getting a handle on the rising crime.
On Tuesday, it was just another example. Mohammad Moghaddan, a Somali refugee, was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies after he had taken two Walmart employees hostage. Moghaddan, 54, was a current employee of the store, and his actions were quickly declared “a case of work place violence” by the sheriff’s office. The hostage taker, armed with a handgun, was shot dead by a SWAT team as terrified shoppers were ushered out of the store.
The city’s mayor has been on a crusade since 2011 to get the U.S. State Department, working with the United Nations, to put a damper on the number of refugees flooding into his city. So far, Mayor Paul Harpole has had little success. Whether Tuesday’s event was terrorism or “workplace violence,” Amarillo, a city of 240,000, has had its share of crime. Adding to the problem is the fact that it has the highest per capita ratio of refugees of any city in the world, says Harpole: “The City of Amarillo gets more refugees per 100,000 population than any city in the world,” Harpole testified April 21 before the state Senate’s Committee on Health and Human Services, which held a hearing on refugee resettlement.
Harpole said Amarillo is building “ghettos” in which bands of refugees from certain countries congregate and even claim to elect their own separate political leaders: “A group of Somalis came in to say they had elected a mayor of their community. Then another faction claimed they had their own leader. We come to find out that rival tribes – slaves and masters – were being settled together.”
Bomb Scare At Canadian High Commission Over Visas
16 June – Source: Associated Press – 128 Words
Kenya’s police chief says a large package sent to the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi caused a bomb scare but turned out to be visa forms.
Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet said Thursday the road to the Canadian diplomatic offices was sealed off as Kenyan bomb experts inspected the package. Boinnet says the 30-kilogram (66-pound) package was found to contain visa application forms.
Kenya is on high alert during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that started earlier this month because Islamic extremists from Somalia have been known to increase attacks during this period. Somalia’s Al-Shabaab rebels, who are allied to al-Qaida, have carried out several attacks in Kenya that have killed hundreds, saying they are retribution for Kenya deploying troops to Somalia to fight the extremists.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“Everyone in Mogadishu lives with the constant threat of terror in some sort of way—aware in the back of their mind that an idling car or a lone backpack may be a tool of destruction” — Mohamed Abdulkadir Ali, founder of the Iftiin Foundation, an organization which focuses on social entrepreneurship in Somalia.
We Must Choose To Not Live In Terror
16 June – Source: TIME – 742 Words
The bomb went off at dusk just as everyone was preparing for evening prayer. I was only a few blocks away from its epicenter and felt the reverberation to my core.
A car bomb had been driven into Mogadishu’s Hotel Ambassador in Somalia as a precursor to a sustained attack by Al-Shabaab gunmen that would last for several hours. The sound of sporadic gunfire could be heard throughout the night. By the time we awoke, 16 people had been reported killed, including two parliamentarians. One of my co-workers was among the dead.
The attack occurred a few days before the advent of Ramadan and a day before a visit by Turkish President Erdogan that would mark Somalia’s development. The strategy behind this terror attack, like many others, was to spread an indelible fear among the public.
It has become increasingly clear over the past year that threats and fears of terror attacks has spread beyond the populations of terror-besieged cities like Mogadishu, Baghdad and Kabul to Brussels, Paris and London—and now to Orlando. One of the reasons the horrific massacre in Orlando is so inexplicable is because of where it happened: in a nightclub in a major U.S. metropolis. How do we deal with this idea that these acts can happen anywhere and to anyone?
A few months ago, I went to a local restaurant to meet a friend. It was packed with a large lunch-time crowd. It was an unusually cool day in Mogadishu, and everyone was out enjoying the reprieve from the normally sweltering summer heat.
The flow and ebb of conversation suddenly hiccuped to a stop as everyone turned to see a small Toyota roughly pull in front of the restaurant, backfiring a loud burp as it careened to a stop. For a few moments, no one exited the car as it idled silently. A collective panic slowly spread, and a few people nervously half-stood from their chairs, forks and spoons clattering to the ground, only to awkwardly fall back down when a stout woman in a bright yellow abaya finally stepped out of the car, waving back at the driver to leave. Relief. The sudden clatter of fallen dishes from the kitchens shattered the embarrassing silence, and conversation began again, over-energetic and slightly harried.