May 25, 2017 | Daily Monitoring Report
Two Killed In A Renewed Inter-Clan Battle In Somalia
25 May, Source: Shabelle News – 99 words
At least two people were reported to have been killed, and several others wounded in a renewed inter-clan fighting in central Somalia on Thursday morning. The fighting broke out between two armed clan militiamen hailing from the rival Puntland and Galmudug states at Balli-Busle area, located east of Mudug region, according to the reports. The tension has been simmering in the rural villages in the volatile region over the past few months, as the warring local clans in deadlock over grazing land and bore-holes. There was an effort by the elders to defuse the escalating violence in Balli-Busle settlement
Key Headlines
- Two Killed in a Renewed Inter-Clan Battle in Somalia (Shabelle News)
- President Farmajo held meeting with Emir of Qatar in Doha (Garowe Online)
- Al-Shabab Claims Somalia Kenya Attacks (VOA News)
- Kenyan Police Nab 2 Suspects Over Attacks (Xinhua)
- The Women Saving Somalia’s Animals From Drought (BBC)
- U.A.E. May Fly Warplanes From Somalia As Africa Reach Grows (Bloomberg)
NATIONAL MEDIA
President Farmajo Held Meeting With Emir of Qatar in Doha
25 May, Source: Garowe Online – 233 words
The President of Somalia’s Federal government Mohamed Abdulahi Mohamed Farmajo was reported held meeting with the Emir of the state of Qatar Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani on Wednesday evening, Garowe Online reports. President Farmajo departed to Qatar on Wednesday on a state visit after receiving an official invitation from the Qatari government, however, prior to his trip, Farmajo concluded a visit to Djibouti where he met his counterpart President Ismail Omar Guelleh. The meeting between Farmajo and Emir of Qatar held in the Presidential Palace in Doha, and reported the two leaders discussed a wide range of issues, mainly the bilateral relationships, security, economy, drought crisis and rebuilding the national army of Somalia. Accompanying President Farmajo are members of the cabinet ministers including Foreign Affairs, Interior, Planning and Defense ministers and are scheduled to meet with their Qatari counterparts in Doha. During the state visit, President Farmajo is also expected to meet other top government officials in Doha to discuss the progress in the country and efforts to rebuild the nation.On the other hand, President Farmajo and his delegate are set to participate in a welcoming event to be held today evening in Doha organized by the Diaspora community in Qatar. This is President Farmajo’s first state visit to Qatar and the tenth overseas since his landslide victory in the presidential against former President Hasan Shaikh Mahmoud in last February.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Al-Shabab Claims Somalia, Kenya Attacks
25 May – Source: VOA News – 468 words
The African extremist group Al-Shabab said it carried out three attacks in Somalia and Kenya on Wednesdaythat killed 16 people, most of them police and security officers. Somalia’s government recently launched an offensive against al-Shabab extremists, and Kenyan officials say the militants are feeling the pressure. Officials in Mogadishu said at least eight people were killed and 15 others wounded by a car bomb explosion late Wednesday near the Somali capital’s seaport. Witnesses told VOA’s Somali service the vehicle that blew up was next to a small restaurant. A mother and young boy from the family that operates the restaurant were among the dead, Mogadishu government spokesman Abdifatah Omar Halane said.
In claiming responsibility for the blast, Al-Shabab said it was targeting police and intelligence officials at the time. In Kenya, meanwhile, witnesses and local authorities said eight security officers were killed in two separate roadside explosions in the country’s northeast, near the border with Somalia. Five men were killed by an improvised explosive device that hit a convoy of vehicles escorting the governor of Mandera County, Ali Roba. A witness who was in the official party told VOA Somali that the five officers “died on the spot” after their vehicle set off the bomb. Roba said in a message posted on his Facebook page: “I would like to inform the general public that the other leaders and I are safe. Unfortunately, I lost five of my security officers, including my personal bodyguard, at an attack on my convoy between Arabia and Fino at around 1 p.m.”
Another roadside bomb killed three police officers traveling between Liboi and Kulan towns in Kenya’s Garissa County. That blast wounded five people, two seriously. Kenya’s police chief, Joseph Boinnet, sounded a warning Tuesday about stepped-up Al-Shabab attacks in his country as a result of military campaigns in Somalia, where African Union troops are supporting Somali forces. Last week, Al-Shabab militants shot and killed a local official at his home in a small town 20 kilometers from Mandera town. The area has been under a curfew since October as a result of Al-Shabab attacks. The curfew is to remain effect through June.
Kenyan Police Nab 2 Suspects Over Attacks
25 May – Source: Xinhua – 520 words
Kenya’s security officers are interrogating two key suspects over recent terror incidents in Mandera and Garissa counties in northeast region in the past two weeks. Regional government official Mohamud Saleh said the suspects are being probed by a multi-agency security team from the police, army and the intelligence. Saleh did not reveal details on when and where the two were arrested. “I can confirm the arrest of the two suspects in these two incidents. They are being interrogated by a multi-agency security team. At this point I can’t reveal more details,” he told journalists in Garissa. Eight police officers died in two separate terror attacks in Mandera and Garissa on Wednesday when their vehicles were blown up after running over explosives. Five officers in the Mandera incident were in a convoy escorting the county’s Governor Ali Roba to a political rally when their vehicle exploded after running over a landmine in Fino.
In Garissa, three police officers died while two others suffered injuries when their vehicle hit a landmine near Kulan Dam in Liboi on Wednesday. Saleh said one of the suspect police believe took part in planting of an explosive device along Dadaab-Liboi road in Garissa County in which four civilians were killed. The device blew up a khat vehicle killing instantly all the four occupants among them a one year old baby on May 16. The other suspect he said was involved in the shooting to death of Omar Jillow area Chief (local government administrator) in Mandera County the previous day (May 15). Saleh did not however disclose their identities saying doing so would jeopardize ongoing investigations. The government official said the enhanced patrols along Kenya-Somalia border and sealing off all possible entry points has restricted movement of the militant inside Somalia. He said the militants out of desperation have now resorted to planting IEDs on the roadsides targeting security personnel patrolling the border and administrators.
The Women Saving Somalia’s Animals From Drought
24 May, Source: BBC – Video 1:24 minutes
Pastoralists in Somalia are losing their animals to the effects of drought. Female vets and medical professionals have been deployed to help to keep the animals alive.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“The proposed Somaliland base could be the U.A.E.’s second in Africa, after reports of one being established in Eritrea, the secretive state that sits on the Bab el-Mandeb and which a United Nations monitoring group says supports the Saudi coalition’s Yemen war.”
U.A.E. May Fly Warplanes From Somalia as Africa Reach Grows
25 May, Source: Bloomberg.com, 669 words
A proposed United Arab Emirates base in semi-autonomous northern Somalia may add a naval facility to a military airport, extending the Arab nation’s reach on the Horn of Africa coastline, a Somali official said. The U.A.E. has leased the airport in the Somaliland port town of Berbera for 25 years and is still negotiating terms of use, Somaliland Foreign Minister Saad Ali Shire said in an interview. Berbera is located on the Gulf of Aden, about 260 kilometers (162 miles) south of Yemen, where U.A.E. troops in a Saudi Arabia-led coalition are battling Houthi rebels, and on the approach to the Bab el-Mandeb, a choke-point in global shipping that gives tankers access to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. “It will be like any other base in the world,” Shire said by phone. “They’ll use it as a sort of surveillance facility, a training facility, and sometimes as an operational facility.” An official at the U.A.E.’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to requests for comment. Famed for its financial allure and skyscrapers, the U.A.E. is increasingly flexing its military and diplomatic muscle as traditional Arab powers are mired in war or political turmoil. Since 2014, in addition to its Yemen intervention, the U.A.E. has backed the U.S. campaign against Islamic State militants in Syria and reportedly launched airstrikes against Islamist fighters in Libya.
The proposed Somaliland base could be the U.A.E.’s second in Africa, after reports of one being established in Eritrea, the secretive state that sits on the Bab el-Mandeb and which a United Nations monitoring group says supports the Saudi coalition’s Yemen war. The Berbera airport was variously used by the Soviet Union and U.S. during the Cold War, when Somalia’s loyalty shifted between the two world powers. “The U.A.E. armed forces in general can use the base” at Berbera, with the preliminary agreement placing no limits on the operations they can carry out, according to Shire. The non-public pact stipulates that the Emirates’ air force alone can use the airport, not any of its allies, he said. “The base will start from the airport,” senior presidential economic adviser Ahmed Hassan Arwo said by phone from Hargeisa, Somaliland’s main city. “Later on, if they have need for a naval base they can do this extension, but it will be negotiated.”
Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but is not recognized as a sovereign state. The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea said in October that satellite imagery taken between September 2015 and at least a year later showed construction of a new port adjacent to Eritrea’s Assab International Airport, about 380 kilometers northwest of Berbera. Over that period, a vessel owned by the Abu Dhabi-based National Marine Dredging Co. frequented Assab, the report said, citing automatic tracking data. It also documented “rapid construction” of what “appears to be a military base” at the southeastern end of the airport and said imagery between April and May 2016 showed tanks and artillery in the compound.
The UN monitors said in an October 2015 report that the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen “may be offering” Eritrea monetary compensation for the use of its land, airspace and territorial waters. Shire said the U.A.E. military base at Assab consists of an airport and a naval facility. The U.A.E. hasn’t publicly commented on the UN reports. Two calls to NMDC’s head office weren’t answered when Bloomberg sought comment on Tuesday. Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel didn’t respond to two emails sent by Bloomberg. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said in an interview published February 2016 on the Information Ministry’s website that Saudi Arabia’s declaration it will “combat terrorism” is “something that has to be supported without preconditions.” Giving no details and not mentioning any use of Eritrean territory, Isaias said “the level of contribution might differ in terms of power and resources, but the need for cooperation is timely.”
TOP TWEETS
@HarunMaruf: BREAKING: Yusuf Hussein, ex-Shabab convicted for the killing of Jowhar Intel Chief Abdiweli Ibrahim Nur in June 2016 is executed today.
@SSG_Somalia 2 days workshop on research,interview techniques & story telling for journalists from 4 Radio stations in Mogadishu concluded.
@Daudoo: 5 Police officers feared dead, their vehicle destroyed in bomb blast in #Garissa county. 3rd #AlShabaab attack in NE #Kenya within 24 hrs
@HarunMaruf: Harun Maruf Retweeted HE Capt. Ali I Roba Governor of Mandera county Ali Roba survived an IED explosion yesterday but 5 of his security officers were killed
@MarkC_Anderson: #Somaliland‘s lack of recognition is worsening food crisis as aid takes longer to go through third parties
@TheVillaSomalia: President Farmaajo arrived in #Doha for state visit.#Qatar a true ally and valuable partner for #Somalia‘s progress. #Partnership
@SomaliPM: Visiting the #SNA Base at Balli-Doogle the Forces vowed soon they will reinstate security of #Somalia under z full control of the Government.
@HarunMaruf: Kenya fears increased Shabab attacks in the northeast, coastal regions in the run up to August elections; 8 sec officers were killed y’day.
@Aynte: Abdi Aynte Retweeted NIEC – This is a major step toward democratisation of #Somalia. Political parties can now register and operate legally. Excellent work @NIECsomalia
@Tuuryare_Africa: BREAKING: At least five dead and six others wounded in car bomb explosion claimed by #AlShabaab in #Mogadishu
@HassanIstiila: #UPDATE; 4 people were killed, & 10 wounded in a car bomb blast near Mogadishu seaport, #Mogadishu‘s police chief, via photos@Osman_Yusuf_
@HarunMaruf: Al-Shabab destroyed several telecom masts in border areas to hamper communication between Kenya security forces and border communities.
@Abukar_Arman: Abukar Arman Retweeted Zamzam: One thing we know for sure is in addition to #Shabaab there are others of various shades who benefit. GOV MUST THINK OUTSIDE THE (fear) BOX Abukar Arman added,
IMAGE OF THE DAY
Deputy Prime Minister Mahdi Mohamed Guled participates in garbage cleaning in Mogadishu.
PHOTO: @HarunMaruf