GOOBJOOG NEWS|MOGADISHU: Information Minister Osman Dube (pictured) walked out on journalists Sunday evading a question on the alleged involvement of Somalis military trainees under Eritrean command in the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
Dube who has taken to issuing several statements including one at 2 am on national television last month took off mid-way a reporter’s question on the widespread reports that the Eritrean trained Somalis were fighting the war alongside Eritrea and Ethiopia federal forces.
‘SEVERAL’ KILLED
Multiple reports and claims by lawmakers and security analysts have emerged in the past week alleging ‘several’ Somalis had been killed and others injured after they were deployed in Tigray under the command of the Eritrean military.
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GAROWE, Somalia (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed on Monday after fighting broke out between the Somali federal army and Jubbaland state forces in the Gedo region of southwestern Somalia, a local doctor told Reuters.
Somalia’s federal government confirmed there had been fighting, concentrated in the town of Bula Hawa bordering Kenya. But it and Jubbaland, one of Somalia’s five semi-autonomous states, reported no casualties.
Mogadishu accused Kenya of backing Jubbaland in the fighting, an accusation that Jubbaland denies.
“Kenya and its guerrilla rebels attacked Bula Hawa town last night,” Osman Dube, Somalia’s information minister, told reporters in Mogadishu. “We overpowered the enemy and captured 100 of them.”
GOOBJOOG NEWS|BELET-HAWO: Kenya organized and supported the Jubbaland allied forces that clashed with Somali military Sunday night in Bele-Hawo, Somalia has said sparking another round of diplomatic fights in recent months.
Information Minister Osman Dube said the forces commanded by wanted Jubbaland Security Minister Abdirashid Janan attacked the border town of Belet-Hawo Sunday night leading to another cycle of fighting with federal forces.
“A Kenyan backed group cross the border tonight and attacked Gedo region but Somali National Army repelled the foreign organised invasion,” Dube said in a statement.
Terming the fighting an ‘aggression organized from inside Kenya’, Dube said the development ‘violates peaceful coexistence of people of the region and international norms based on respect and protection of national sovereignty.”
GOOBJOOG NEWS|NAIROBI: Kenya has once again treated Somalia’s accusations with disdain making no reference to it in a statement Monday evening and instead called for a cessation of hostilities in Bula Hawo as Mogadishu claims Nairobi lent a hand to Jubbaland forces to ‘invade’ the border town.
In a statement to newsrooms, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said it had written to the African Union expressing concerns of a possible humanitarian crisis over the fighting which Monday claimed over ten lives.
“Kenya’s primary concern is that the renewed fighting engenders large-scale displacement of civilians inside Somalia and increasingly generates large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers to Kenya, therefore aggravating the already dire humanitarian situation in Somalia and in the refugee camps in Kenya,” the statement read in part.
TODAY
January 25, 2021
At least 11 people were killed on Monday after fighting broke out between the Somali federal army and Jubbaland state forces in the Gedo region of southwestern Somalia, a local doctor told Reuters.
Somalia’s federal government confirmed there had been fighting, concentrated in the town of Bula Hawa bordering Kenya. But it and Jubbaland, one of Somalia’s five semi-autonomous states, reported no casualties.
Mogadishu accused Kenya of backing Jubbaland in the fighting, an accusation that Jubbaland denies.
“Kenya and its guerrilla rebels attacked Bula Hawa town last night,” Osman Dube, Somalia’s information minister, told reporters in Mogadishu. “We overpowered the enemy and captured 100 of them.”