| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Horn |
| Fighting and shelling continue for the second day in Las Anod in Row |
| 2023-02-08 |
| [ShabelleMedia] Fighting is raging on in the northern city of Las Anod between Somaliland troops and armed residents who want to be out of under Hargeisa control. An official in the town said local forces managed to repel an attack by Somaliland forces against their entrance checkpoint on Monday morning. The two sides engaged in a deadly shootout early in the morning as SSC traditional elders were preparing to announced the result of days-long conference in Las Anod city. The meeting produced a communique that declare an autonomous regional state, free from the secessionist state after almost 15 years of oppressions and lack of freedom, they said. At least 35 people were killed and dozens of others injured during Monday’s fighting. The general hospital was coping with the civilians caught in the cross-fire and sustained wounds. The dead include a family of seven members whose house was hit by a mortar. Since yesterday, Somaliland forces continued shelling the city as an attempt to prevent the elders to establish an administration that supports the greater Somalia and part of the Federal member states. After the demonstrations and shootings in Lasanod in early January, many families left the city in fear of a full-blown of war between SSC forces and Somaliland troops. A battle intensified for the second day in a row in Las Anod, witnesses said, with at least 24 people killed and 53 others injured as locals insisted they want to rejoin the federal government of Somalia by cutting ties with the regional administration of Somaliland. The region declared self-independence in 1991 following a civil war in the North which had blessings of former military dictator Siad Barre but to date, the United Nations ...a formerly good idea gone bad... Security Council and other member states are yet to internationally recognize it. A number of clan elders now want Las Anod to be governed by Mogadishu. Somaliland accused Puntland ...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion... of sending fighters to the troubled town to fight alongside local militia but the semi autonomous region of Somalia has since refuted the claims. Doctors said a total of 58 people have been killed for two days in Las Anod, adding to the over 20 who were killed last month. Local elders in Las Anod said electricity and water had been cut off, and health centres attacked with mortars, Rooters reported. "Somaliland forces are carrying out heavy attacks on medical facilities and civilian homes. The deaths and injuries of civilians cannot be counted," said Mukhtar Abdi, a resident of Las Anod, the administrative centre of Sool region. Over the weekend, a number of local elders and members of the civil society from Las Anod insisted that they don't recognize Somalilaland. However it remains unclear who started the fight but tensions have been building in the town for the last one month.. "Today, the (perpetrators) were supported by militias from the neighbouring Puntland region of Somalia and the so called Khatumo militia in a carefully coordinated manner," Somaliland's state broadcaster said on Twitter. Puntland's interior minister Abdi Farah Said Juhaa said his government, which has controlled the town in the past, was not involved in the fighting, and that Somaliland should withdraw its troops from Las Anod and other areas, Rooters reports. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the president of the federal republic of Somalia, for the umpteenth time asked the two warring parties to embrace ceasefire even as Somaliland maintained that it will not withdraw her soldiers from the region. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |