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Fighting kills 9 civilians in Somalia

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MOGADISHU (Somalilandpress) — At least 9 civilians were killed and 14 others wounded in clashes between Somali government troops and insurgents in Mogadishu on Thursday and Friday, Human rights group said.

The heavy fighting erupted late on Thursday and continued into Friday morning in the capital in one of the bloodiest days in recent weeks.

A Mogadishu based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization said “casualties are from the overnight shelling,” and added that they were still monitoring Monday’s casualties.

“We saw al Shabaab carrying their dead and injured in a minibus. But we do not know the exact figure of the deaths,” Hassan Nur, a resident, told Reuters.

“The government shells almost leveled houses that housed local and foreign Al-Shabab fighters,” he added.

Government officials could not be reached for comment about the casualties.
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Somali government are battling with Al-Qaeda inspired Al-shabab fighters who run most of southern Somalia while the government controls few areas in the capital backed by Ugandan and Burundi troops.

The fighting in Somalia has killed over 19,000 Somalis since 2007 and displaced another 1.5 million. Somalia is one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies.

Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Muhudin Ahmed Roble
Somalilandpress, 8 February 2010
muhudin01@gmail.com

Ten die on drifting Gulf of Aden migrant boat

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HARGEISA, 8 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – At least 10 migrants died and 30 went missing when the boat smuggling them from Somalia to Yemen suffered an engine failure in the Gulf of Aden, officials said Sunday.

Seventy people, mostly Ethiopians, were rescued when the coastguard in the northern breakaway state of Somaliland’s Sanag region spotted the boat drifting towards the shore.

“The rescued passengers told us that the boat was carrying around 110 migrants when it left,” Said Ige Mohamed, the head of immigration for Sanag province, told AFP by phone.

“Unfortunately, 10 were confirmed dead and 30 others are still missing in the sea,” he said.

Mohamed explained that the migrants presumably spent several days huddled inside the small boat with nothing to eat or drink and apparently jumped into the water upon seeing the coast.

Two were found already dead on the boat but at least eight others drowned as they attempted to swim to the shore, Mohamed explained.

“We don’t have many details. I don’t know how many days they spent on the boat but the survivors told us they were headed to Yemen and left from Bosasso” in the neighbouring semi-autonomous state of Puntland,” he said.

“Most of them are in serious condition and risk not making it if they don’t receive urgent medical attention,” the official said.

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Abdullahi Awale, a security official in the Somaliland capital Hargeysa, said the incident was being investigated.

According to the UN refugee agency, the number of migrants fleeing the unstable Horn of Africa and arriving in Yemen rose by 50 percent in 2009, reaching a record high of 74,000.

The number of Ethiopians making the journey across the Gulf of Aden or Red Sea — a route described by the UN as “the busiest and deadliest in the world” — doubled in 2009, while the number of Somalis remained steady.

More than 300 people drowned or did not survive the trip last year.

Source: AFP

Why Should I Send My Daughter to School?

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Nimo was an 18 year old orphan girl born into a poor family, she lived with her mother in the Sheikh Nour village in the outskirts of Hargeisa. As many other young people in this area, she can not afford to continue her higher education. She completed 26 June Secondary school last year and according to her examination results, she became first female student with the highest score in Somaliland’s whole Secondary Schools education.

Nimo was brilliant student who completed her four-years secondary school education after walking 5-kilometers walk from her home each day. She comes from a female-household and her mother was really disappointed with her staying at home. She said, my daughter was a good student and showed a lot of potential and interest in education but unfortunately, she insisted the family can not pay for her higher education fees. “So as far as I know this, why should I send my daughter to school?” she said.

Culturally, parents sent their sons to schools instead of daughters, only few families encourage their daughters to attend schools. Therefore, it was primitive believes saying that educated women only work while the ideal women in our society should look after her children, fetch water, clean and cook when her mother goes to the market. Others believe that women are possible to neglect their domestic duties and disobeying their parents due to the higher education they might have achieved. But those days are exhausted and invalid today.

For that reason, it was unbelievable that girls in Somaliland especially at Hargeisa are more advanced than boys in education; today our society are more comprehensive and ignoring all primitive ideas towards female communities and different sectors of society as a whole. Girls have taken up a positive role in our society in development and no area is more evident than education, as they are more sincere than boys.

Today, if you look up around the streets in Hargeisa in the afternoons girls spent their luxury time going in the private schools. Six out of ten persons you pass on the streets were young girls who are carrying hand bags full of books.

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Me, as a youth I believe that women deserve to be given a chance to educate same as men. As result of that, it’s quite comprehensive that the educated mother builds up the society from the base and teaches her children good habits such as kindness, honesty, telling the truth and respect. Really educated mother is an industry of constructive society she develops the child physically, mentally, and spiritually. Similarly, encourages her children in doing good things and also helps them with their studies by checking all their homework and preparing them a program to follow. But not all the mothers.

Apart from all of the above, she does so many other jobs. Educated women are very aware of the part she has to play in their society. She understands her responsibilities towards her self, her family and her country and that is how Islam believes as their right.

Do you know the history of the women’s struggle in the west? In 9th century French experts and philosophers held a conference which titled “is the soul in the women human or animal” they finally agreed that she is human but the objective in life is to serve for the man and make him happy. My sisters in faith, is that people believe like that told us today women’s rights.

Islam respects, venerates and honors our mothers and sisters. We have good examples in the Qur’an like Maryam, Balgisa and etc. Islam also absolutely rejects every thing that is against human rights. Let’s live with a life full of rights, respect, love and cooperation.

Written by: Farhan Abdi Suleiman (Oday)
Email: oday1999@yahoo.com
Tell: 4401132

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Ethiopia Gets Microsoft Software In Amharic

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Addis Ababa, 7 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – US software giant Microsoft has launched Windows Vista in Amharic, the first operating system in the national language of Ethiopia, the official news agency said Saturday.

“Launching the Amharic version software is a major step forward for Amharic to be a language of technology,” Director of the Ethiopian ICT Development Agency, Debretsion Gebremichael was quoted as saying by the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA).

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He said 40 scholars from the Addis Ababa University had taken part in the translation of the software and added that plans were being drafted for translation into some of the nation’s other languages.

“Ethiopia as a country of over 80 million people, has its own language and alphabet, and it is Microsoft?s desire to let this huge country use its Amharic service pack,” ENA quoted Microsoft’s Africa boss Cheick Modibo Diarra as saying.

Source: AFP

The Mourning Tree: an autobiography and a memoir of prison by Mohamed Barud Ali (update)

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Book Launch: The Mourning Tree – the autobiography of Mohamed Barud Ali
Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010 at 4pm
Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH

The Mourning Tree: an autobiography and a memoir of prison, by Mohamed Barud Ali
Ponte Invisibile Ed (redsea-online), February 2010, 256 pp – 13x20cm (soft cover)

Kayd Somali Arts and Culture in collaboration with redsea-online.com is proudly inviting you to the presentation of new book: ‘Weerane’ (The Mourning Tree), autobiography by Mohamed Barud Ali. Join us to discuss this new autobiography with the author and also mark and commemorate with us, the students protest ( 20 Feb 1982, erupted 28 years ago in Hargeysa) demanding justice and the release of UFO members. We expect you on Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010 at 4pm at Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH.

This prison memoir will not only give first-hand information of the experience of the brutalities of Siyad Barre’s Somalia but also of the life of a nomad child who is brought to the city to live with his aunt because there was no work for him due to the fact that his father did not own any camels to be looked after. In the city while growing up, hunger was never far away. That motivated Mahamed to perform well at school which gave him the opportunity to go to the United Kingdom.  After he earned his university degree, he went back to his home town Hargeysa where he met young professionals’ like him. They decided to volunteer for their community, what became to be known by the international community as Hargeysa Self-help group and locally as UFO. For their noble acts, Mahamed and his colleagues were imprisoned and what followed were eight long lonely years, where the studying of insects was the main entertainment of the day.  The reasons why they were freed, while at the same time the rest of their community had been destroyed, were as strange and surprising as the reasons why they were jailed in the first place were bizarre. There was no time in Mohamed’s life to get depressed or discouraged when he and his group were freed as the reconstruction of the country had to start immediately.
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The other speakers are Jama Musse Jama; director of Red Sea online (publisher of ‘The Mourning Tree’), Rashiid Sheikh Abdullahi; Author  and expert on Somali culture,  Martin Hill; the former director of Amnesty International Somalia desk and researcher who was involved in this case, Judith Gardner; author Somalia–the Untold Story: The War through the Eyes of Somali Women,  Adan Warsame Said; the author’s friend and fellow prisoner, Fawzia Yousuf H Adam; The Director of Raad, I.M Lewis; Emeritus  professor at The London School of Economics and Political Science (TBC) and others

The Mourning Tree: an autobiography and a memoir of prison, by Mohamed Barud Ali is the first of “Rag & Dumar” series, which is a selected list of biography books, published and distributed by Ponte Invisibile Ed. (redsea-online.com)

Mahamed Barud Ali is civil right activist, Hero to some, the prisoner of conscience under the brutal regime of Somalia; he lives in Hargeisa, with his wife and children and works on issues relating to human rights and civil liberties. ‘

Join us to discuss this new autobiography with the author and also mark and commemorate with us on Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010, 4pm at Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH.

For more information call 07903712949 or Email:

ayan_mahamoud@kayd.org
Website: www.kayd.org

SOMALIA: Islamist insurgents pour into Mogadishu

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NAIROBI (Somalilandpress) — An influx of fighters from Islamist insurgents have filled the streets of the capital of the wartorn nation of Somalia as the government announces fresh offensive against Islamist rebel, residents and witnesses told Somalilandpress.

A local journalist has said on conditions of anonymity that heavily armed Al-Shabab fighters arriving from the town of Baidoa have filled the streets of Mogadishu on Friday and Saturday in an attempt to hold their positions.

The journalist also said hundreds of Somali government forces have been deployed into the front line areas currently under control of Islamist insurgents.

Somali president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has confirmed that his government was ready to mount a fresh offensive against the rebel mostly in the capital Mogadishu.

He added that his troops were ready to take strategic towns in southern Somalia including Baidoa, Kismayu and Merka, curently under the control of Al-Shabaab and Hisbul-Islam.

A large number of African Union troops have approached Merka and Baraawe ports assisting the Somali government, Press TV based in Iran reported.

There are 5000 AU troops in the country mainly from Uganda and Burundi, the Somali government has repeatedly requested at least 8000 in order to flash-out the rebels.
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The reporter has confirmed to Somalilandpress that civilians have fled their homes in Mogadishu’s southern districts of Hodan, Wardhigley and Howl-Wadag.

Some of the civilians are reported to have fled to Elsha, 15 Km (9 miles) southwest of Mogadishu where at least one-quarter of a million Somalis are already based, displaced by the war.

Al-Shabab hardliners, who openly admitted their links with Al-Qaeda control most of southern Somalia while the weak Somali government backed by Western countries are confined to small pockets of the country.

The fighting in Somalia has killed over 19,000 Somalis since 2007 and has further displaced 1.5 million people inside the country while another 560,000 civilians have registered as refugees in neighboring countries. Somalia is one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies and was ranked the most corrupted country in 2009.

The Horn of Africa nation has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Maj. General Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Picture: Hard-line Islamist Al Shabab fighters conduct military exercise in northern Mogadishu’s Suqaholaha neighborhood, Somalia, Friday Jan. 1, 2010. The group’s senior official said the young fighters have recently completed training to join what they said to be a global war against the enemy of Allah. (AP Photo/ Farah Abdi Warsameh)

By Muhyadin Ahmed Roble
Nairobi – Kenya

Somalilandpress, 6 February 2010

Somaliland: Two Died As Demonstrations Rock Lasanod

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Lasanod, 6 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – A violent demonstration rock Lasanod today as tens of people burned tires and were throwing stones against the security forces in the city.

The demonstrations took place as the police arrested teachers at Islamic madrasas in the town in connection with the recent bomb attacks.

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The demonstrators were chanting statements against Somaliland government requesting an immediate release of the prisoners.

At least two people died when the police fired at the crowds who are throwing stones and burning tires in the main roads. Others are also wounded.

This comes when a number of Somaliland ministers and other officials are visiting the town to enforce the ongoing investigations of the recent bomb attacks in the city. Somaliland officials believe that Alshabab is behind the attacks but nobody claimed the responsibility.

Somalilandpress

Appeal For Urgent Humanitarian Assistance and Livelihood Support For Humanitarian Crises Prevention in Somaliland

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Hargeisa, 6 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – Predictions were made that food security and nutrition situation may worsen in most parts of Somaliland by Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) of FAO in its early warning briefs .
Some of the reasons cited included:

i. Poor “deyr” rains that preceded by dry “Hagaa” season which negatively affected pastural livelihoods.

ii. Very critical nutrition situation reported in agro-pastoral population, based on a data for rapid assessment.

iii. High numbers of children, identified as acutely malnourished, that require rehabilitation. For Togdheer pastoral population, the situation was classified as serious.

iv. Insufficient water and pasture for livestock herds through the “jilaal” dry season (January to March 2010), which will cause early water trucking in Sool, Haud and Haud of Hargeisa.

v. Very low Livestock production and re-production due to poor conception rate during the post “jilaal” and “Gu 2009” as well as livestock diseases during, “Hagaa 09”, that resulted in death and abortion of camels and goats. In Awdal region, cattle and sheep had weak body conditions.

Recent assessment carried out by National Environment Risk and Disaster (NERAD) also confirmed the gravity of the drought faced by the people.

The facts are:

 The ”Gu” rains were below normal
 The “Karan” rains were below normal
 The “ Deyr” was also below normal
 The “Heis “rains in Guban areas didn’t also rain normally
 In certain areas in Sool, Sanag and Togdheer, there were no rains

As a result of above facts, poor pasture, scarcity of water, food and weakend human and animal health has been experienced. Recent Reports received from all regions confirmed (Viz: Togdheer, Sool, Sanag, Awdal,Maroodijeex,and Selel) that both pastoralists and agro- pastoralists are facing serious, but devastating drought. The affected population is estimated to be 40% of the total population of Somaliland of 3.5 million which equals to 1.4 million people.

A serious humanitarian catastrophe seems to be imminent, which is beyond the capacity of national authority, that requires to be prevented.

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The government of Somaliland, therefore, appeals to international community (i.e. Governments, UN Agencies and other humanitarian organizations as well as the business communities and other benevolent institutions for urgent humanitarian assistance and livelihood support to avert worsening of the humanitarian crises.

In addition, assistance and support to urgent water trucking, construction and rehabilitation of boreholes as well as rehabilitation and desilting of “Berkads” and ‘Dams’ and the supplies of necessary medications for affected human and livestock populations will be needed to avert break-out of epidemics. Nutritional support to the weak and sick will also be necessary.

The situation is critical and may continue to worsen in the coming months. It requires rapid and fast responses from the international community, the business community, humanitarian and benevolent institutions to deliver needed humanitarian assistance and livelihood support.

Hon. Ali Ibrahim Mohamed
Minister of National planning, coordination and
Relations with International Organizations

On behalf of
Chairperson of the National Disaster Management Committee
and Vice President of the Republic of Somaliland

Djibouti, Somalia urge enforcing sanctions on Eritrea.

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Addis Ababa (Somalilandpress)- Djibouti and Somalia have argued the international community to tighten the sanctions imposed on Eritrea over Somali Islamists’ backing.

At the conclusion of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the government of Djibouti and the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia [TFG] urged the international community to take new measures against Eritrea in addition to the sanctions that were recently imposed.

They also called for the formation of a new organization to enforce the sanctions on Eritrea and therefore discourage its government from meddling in Somalia’s internal affairs.

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The statement by the two countries comes at a time The African Union heads of states have accused Eritrea of destabilizing Horn of Africa nations.

The governments of Somalia and Djibouti urged the international community to take even further drastic measures against Eritrea in addition to the sanctions on the country in December 2009.

Somalilandpress

Kenya: 50 People Die of Cancer Everyday

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Kenya, (SomalilandPress)-Statistics which was released on Thursday has said about 50 Kenyans die each day various forms of cancers. About 80,000 cases of cancer are diagnosed in Kenya each year, Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) Chief Executive Officer Dr Jotham Micheni announced.

All the patients can only use the required treatment at KNH which is the largest referral hospital in East and Central Africa.
“We have very few specialists in oncology and therefore human resource for health in terms of cancer is definitely a major challenge,” Dr Micheni said. In Kenya only four specialized oncologists (cancer specialists) and another four Radio-Oncologists (doctors who prescribe radiotherapy) were available.

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Only one of these eight cancer specialists was specialised for children, as Dr Micheni told local media. Micheni said this is the result of the high cost of the training which esteemed between Sh7 million and Sh10 million) and South Africa is the only country in the continent which offering the course. “There are no cancer registries in the country and hence the actual burden of cancer is unclear. Very little research has been going on in the area of cancer,” he told. The doctor said the most common cancers in both men and women are those of the oesophagus, prostrate, breast and cervical cancer.

Public Health and Sanitation assistant minister James Gesami has said that the government has did little attention to the non-communicable disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that each year cancer kills more people than HIV, Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined. World Health Organisation Kenya representative Dr David Okello has said tobacco contributes to 30 percent of cancer deaths in the worldwide.

Muhyadin Ahmed Roble
SomalilandPress,
Nairobi, Kenya