Somalia may have a new government, but it can't seem to shake its history of chaos.
In Mogadishu, the capital of the Horn of Africa nation, gunmen threw grenades and a land mine exploded near the convoy of Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Sunday, killing at least five bodyguards and wounding several others, said Mohamed Ali Americo, a senior official in Gedi's office. Gedi was unharmed.
It was the second such narrow escape for Gedi. On May 3, an explosion went off just 10m from Gedi during his first visit to Mogadishu since he took office last year. He was not harmed and said the incident was an accident, but others suspect the blast was an attempt to kill him and guarantee his exiled government never takes power.
Gedi's transitional government, formed late last year after lengthy peace talks in Kenya, faces opposition from warlords who thrive in the anarchy Somalia has known since opposition leaders ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Fundamentalist Muslim leaders also oppose the secular transitional government.
The government is further weakened by internal rivalries. Gedi and President Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed have set up in Jowhar, a Somali town 90km northwest of the capital, saying Mogadishu is considered unsafe. Rivals have set up another camp in Mogadishu.
This nation of 7 million has since 1991 been a patchwork of battling fiefdoms. The transitional government makes little pretense of having much influence on land, let alone on the seas, where pirates have been seizing merchant ships and holding them for ransom.
Somalia lies along key shipping lanes linking the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
Even before the recent cruise ship attack signaled pirates had opened a new and bolder chapter, Gedi had called on neighboring countries to send warships to patrol his 3,000km coastline, Africa's longest. The International Maritime Bureau, citing a sharp rise in piracy this year along Somalia's coastline, has for several months warned ships to stay at least 240km away.
On Saturday, two boats full of pirates approached the Seabourn Spirit about 160km off the coast of Somalia and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
The cruise ship sped away. None of its passengers, mostly Americans with some Australians and Europeans, were injured, said Bruce Good, spokesman for the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp. One member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel, cruise line president Deborah Natansohn said.
Judging from the location of the attack, the pirates are likely to have been from a group that hijacked a UN-chartered vessel in June and held its crew and food aid hostage for 100 days, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program.
Somali pirates "are getting more powerful, more vicious and bolder day by day," Mwangura said.
Britain's National Union of Marine Aviation and Shipping Transport, which represents merchant navy officers, called on Sunday for a naval task force to protect ships traveling off the coast of Somalia.
US and NATO warships patrol the region to protect vessels in deeper waters further out, but they are not permitted in Somalia's territorial waters.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS