Several thousand Somali forces trained in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya will open a second front against Islamist insurgents by the end of the year in Somalia’s south and central regions, the prime minister said on Sunday.
The forces will try to capture key towns including the port of Kismayo, which is believed to generate a substantial amount of revenue for the insurgency, Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said in the capital of Mogadishu.
Kenya has a force of 2,000 Somali refugees stationed in northern Kenya, and Ethiopia trained a force of 1,000 fighters under a German-funded program.
“Those forces have now completed their training and we are expecting them to come back and really now open a different front,” Sharmarke said. “Unless you open different fronts you’re not going to end this war.”
The prime minister’s comments follow a month of intense fighting between Somali government forces and the insurgents, some of whom have pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.
Government soldiers who had gone for months without pay abandoned key positions in Mogadishu, many of which African Union peacekeepers had to fight to regain. The prime minister was unable to say whether the new forces would be consistently paid.
“Some forces are being paid today and then it will take them four or five months to get another salary,” he said. “You cannot expect those forces to be loyal and defend the country when they’re not getting ... what they’re entitled to.”
An allied militia in the central region was also expected to help with the new front, he said, although representatives of the militia alliance earlier said that relations between them and the government were strained.
Sharmarke said that the government would “definitely” deploy the foreign-trained troops by the end of the year because they wanted to strike while the Islamist insurgents were weakened.
A nurse at Deynile hospital, located in an insurgent-held neighborhood, said that around 20 fighters had come seeking treatment a day over the past few weeks instead of the usual two or three.
Somalia has not had a functioning government for nearly 20 years.
The current administration is protected by 7,100 African Union peacekeepers, who are gradually expanding their bases throughout the capital in an effort to recapture territory from Islamist insurgents.
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS