Heavy fighting between Islamic militia and gunmen supporting a US-backed alliance subsided yesterday as calls for an end to the week-long bloodletting intensified, witnesses and officials said.
Although no official truce had been reached between the rival fighters, clan elders and religious leaders had called on the warriors to end the bloody skirmishes that have thus far claimed 111 lives since last Sunday.
"The violence has susbsided after a ceasefire call by the prominent personalities," said Mohamed Muyhaydin, a resident of the Sisi district north of the capital Mogadishu, the center of the pitched battles.
"No ceasefire has been agreed by the warring sides, but it seems that they are giving attention to the mounting criticism of the violence in Mogadishu," Muyhaydin added.
Meanwhile, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed warned government ministers involved in the fighting that they would be excluded from power if they continued with the skirmishes.
Some members of Yusuf's largely powerless government that sits in the town of Baidoa, around 250km west of the capital, are also members of the US-backed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) that has been fighting with the influential Union of Islamic courts.
"The president declared [that] ministers involved in the violence in Mogadishu could no longer be in the Cabinet of the Somali transitional government," Information Minister Mohamed Mohamed Abdi Hayir said.
The ARPCT alliance has vowed to curb the power of the courts, that have gained popular backing by restoring some stability to areas in Mogadishu through the imposition of Shariah law.
It also accuses the courts of harboring terrorists and training foreign fighters on Somali soil, charges that Islamic leaders deny.
The lull in fighting yesterday came after warlords on Saturday deployed hundreds of fighters in Mogadishu to battle their Islamic rivals.
Two regional warlords joined their US-backed colleagues in the capital, deploying heavily-armed militiamen to stoke fierce urban fighting that spilled from its initial confines in northern Mogadishu to the south.
Alarmed, Somalia's powerless transitional government asked Western powers to squeeze a truce from the ARPCT and the Union of Islamic courts.
There were also direct appeals to groups involved in the fighting.
"I am appealing and begging the warring sides in Mogadishu to show a sense of humanity and stop the war," influential Somali parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden told reporters in Nairobi.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS