Somalia’s embattled government offered an amnesty on Tuesday to Islamist rebels still fighting in Mogadishu, while the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force pressed for 3,000 more troops to secure the capital.
Although the bulk of the Islamist Shebab who controlled about half of Mogadishu pulled out on Saturday, remnant insurgents have clashed with AU-backed Somalian government troops trying to secure the famine-struck city.
The government “offered a general amnesty to insurgent fighters remaining in Mogadishu who give themselves up and renounce violence,” it said in a statement.
“We offer an amnesty — put down your weapons and your guns, and come and join the people and your society,” government spokesman Abdirahman Osman said.
Major General Fred Mugisha, the Ugandan commander of the AU troops protecting the Somalian government, called for an urgent deployment of 3,000 soldiers to boost security in Mogadishu after the Shebab pulled out.
“Our forces now have to cover a much larger area of the city and we risk being overstretched,” Mugisha said in a statement.
His request is in line with a UN Security Council resolution adopted last December that authorized boosting the AU force in Somalia, currently numbering 9,000, to 12,000.
“We need to move quickly if we are to help expand government administration and help Somalians. History will judge us for the lives we protect, not those we destroy,” Mugisha added.
About 100,000 Somalians who have fled to Mogadishu from other parts of the country because of a severe drought are facing famine and aid groups are struggling to provide emergency supplies.
The Shebab rebels said their withdrawal from the war-wracked capital was a change of military tactics.
However, much of southern and central Somalia remains under their control. Analysts say internal wrangles, losses in the fighting for Mogadishu and a possible change of military strategy explained the withdrawal.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it was assessing how the rebel withdrawal would open aid groups’ access to the city.
“Although it is too early to know what the impact on the overall situation is, humanitarian actors are assessing the ability to operate and/or scale up activities,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees