Region

MOGADISHU — A military base in Somalia came under attack by Al Shabaab militants on Wednesday, police and witnesses said, just as the African Union(AU) announced it was beginning a drawdown of troops in the violence-wracked nation.

Almost simultaneous suicide bomb blasts targeted the base in the southern city of Baardhere, which hosts both Ethiopian and Somali troops, triggering heavy gunfire, the sources said.

There was no immediate information about any casualties from the attack, which was claimed by Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile central government for more than 15 years.

"The first explosion which is presumed to have been carried by a suicide bomber targeted the entrance of the ADC military base in Baardhere where Ethiopian forces are stationed and train Somali troops," local police officer Abdi Bare said.

"The second blast occurred in the same area within a few minutes after the first one, there are some casualties but we don't have the details so far," he said, adding that the situation in the area was "now normal".

Local resident Bare Hassan reported “heavy gunfire” after the first blast at the base in Baardhere, which lies in Jubaland state about 450 kilometres from the capital Mogadishu.

Al Shabaab has continued to wage deadly attacks in Somalia in the face of a major offensive by pro-government forces backed by the AU force known as ATMIS against the extremist group.

Less than four weeks ago, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed when Al Shabaab fighters stormed an AU base located southwest of Mogadishu in one of the deadliest attacks since the offensive was launched last year.

And earlier this month, six civilians were killed in a six-hour siege at a beachside hotel in Mogadishu.

Army chief sacked 

Earlier on Wednesday, the African Union Transition Mission announced it had started to reduce troop numbers in Somalia in line with UN resolutions which mandate a drawdown of 2,000 soldiers by the end of June 2023.

It said it handed over a base operated by Burundian forces in Hirshabelle state in south-central Somalia to the Somali National Army.

Somalia’s army and police are set to assume full security by the end of 2024, 17 years after the AU force was created by the UN Security Council to help in the fight against Al Shabaab.

The UN Security Council is due to confer on Somalia on Thursday.

ATMIS in April last year replaced the previous mission known as AMISOM, which had a force of about 20,000 drawn from several nations including Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

Kenya has suffered a string of retaliatory assaults over its involvement in Somalia, and there have been several deadly bomb blasts in the remote northeast of the country near the border.

In the latest incident suspected to be the work of Al Shabaab, two policemen and a civilian were killed when their vehicle ran over an IED in the county of Mandera on Tuesday, local officials said.

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud took office in May last year and pledged “all-out” war against the extremists who were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 but remain entrenched in areas of south and central Somalia.

Earlier this week Mohamud — who is on a trip to the United States — sacked the head of the army, Odowaa Yusuf Rageh, and named Ibrahim Sheikh Muhidin as his successor.

The Horn of Africa nation of about 17 million people is struggling to emerge from decades of conflict and natural disasters including drought and flooding.

One of the poorest countries on the planet, Somalia has been mired in chaos since the fall of dictator Siad Barre’s military regime in 1991.

In a key step last month, the government announced plans for the country’s first nationwide one-person one-vote elections to be held next year, replacing a complex clan-based indirect system.

KAFR NURAN,  Syria — Artillery strikes by the Syrian army killed three civilians including a child on Wednesday in the last major rebel-held bastion in the country’s northwest, a war monitor said.

Shelling lasted all day at several locations in the region, an AFP correspondent there said, adding that the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) militant group targeted government positions in retaliation.

“Three civilians including a child were killed in heavy artillery fire in the town of Kafr Nuran in Aleppo’s western countryside,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Two others were injured, added the observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria.

The shelling damaged a house in the town of Kafr Nuran, an AFP correspondent said.

Residents in the town told AFP that the artillery fire hit a neighbourhood where some people had gathered to buy watermelons.

Earlier Wednesday, HTS rocket fire had killed a Syrian soldier in regime-held areas of Idlib province, the observatory said.

Nearly half of Idlib province, including the provincial capital of the same name, as well as parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia, make up the last of Syria’s rebel-held areas.

HTS, the former Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, is the dominant group in the area, but other rebel groups are also active.

Despite periodic clashes, a ceasefire deal brokered by regime ally Moscow, as well as Ankara — which supports rebel groups in Syria — has largely held in the northwest since March 2020.

The Idlib region is home to about 3 million people, around half of them displaced.

Syria’s war has killed more than half-a-million people and displaced millions since erupting in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.

MOGADISHU — At least eight people were killed on Tuesday in fighting outside parliament in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland between local security forces and armed militiamen loyal to opposition politicians, police and witnesses said.

The clashes in the state capital, Garowe, erupted during a parliamentary session to debate changes to the local constitution, which the opposition claims is a bid by Puntland's president to extend his term in office.

"Around eight people were confirmed dead in the fighting and more than 10 others were wounded, including civilians," said Abdiweli Hassan, a police officer in Garowe.

He said the violence broke out when gunmen loyal to opposition politicians confronted security forces protecting parliament and tried to disrupt the session.

"They have been defeated and the situation in town is calm now," he said, adding: "No one will be allowed to act above the law."

One witness, Mohamednur Ali, said he saw around six dead bodies and several wounded people, adding: "The fighting was very intense and both sides used heavy machine guns."

“The situation is normal now but there is still sporadic gunfire,” Ali said.

Another witness, Nimo Adan, said she was caught up in the crossfire and saw several people killed.

In May, Puntland held local elections that were the first direct polls in Somalia in more than half a century, outside the breakaway region of Somaliland.

At the time, opposition politicians accused Puntland state president Said Abdullahi Deni of manipulating the election procedure and seeking to amend the constitution to enable him to extend his mandate which is due to end in January next year.

Later in May, Somalia’s central government and four federal member states — excluding Puntland — announced a deal for a one-person one-vote system to be introduced with local elections set for June next year.

It followed a pledge by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in March to end the complex clan-based indirect voting system in the Horn of Africa nation, which has been mired in chaos for decades.

Somalia has not held direct elections nationwide since 1969, when the dictator Siad Barre seized power.

But the new plan also calls for parliamentary and presidential votes in the federal states on November 30 next year, beyond the current expiry dates of some mandates including Deni’s term.

An arid oil-rich region in northeastern Somalia, Puntland declared autonomy in 1998 and relations with the central government in Mogadishu have often been tense.

BEIRUT — The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Tuesday that a funding squeeze could jeopardise access to basic services for millions.

UNRWA provides services such as health, sanitation, education and social assistance to nearly six million Palestinians registered in the Palestinian territories, including Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

It is the latest in a series of warnings from UNRWA on possible deep cuts if the international community fails to provide more support.

In January, it appealed for $1.6 billion in funding for 2023, but donors have only pledged around half of that amount.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Tuesday his agency was seeking $300 million "to keep our operations running between now and the end of the year".

"If we have no more commitment from member states, we will hit the wall" from autumn, he told a press conference in Beirut.

The agency needs $200 million for "core activities" including education and social safety nets, $75 million for food aid in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, and around $20 million in cash assistance to refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, he said.

There is a "risk of a vacuum in the absence of any proper alternative" to UNRWA's "state-like" services, he said.

"Once we reach an inflection point it will be very difficult to reverse it."

UNRWA has long faced chronic budget shortfalls, with the agency "in crisis-mode for about 10 years", according to Lazzarini.

He said refugees in Lebanon, crippled by a three-year-long economic collapse, have been hit particularly hard.

The agency advertised 14 jobs for garbage collectors and "received 37,000 applications", including many candidates with university degrees, Lazzarini said.

UNRWA has previously warned that its needs have been skyrocketing as global crises, inflation and disruptions in global supply chains contributed to surging poverty and unemployment levels among Palestinians.

“We fear to reach a point where the agency cannot cover salaries anymore for 30,000 employees in the region,” Lazzarini added.

“Sooner or later our ability to deliver services will come to an end,” he warned.

QAMISHLI, Syria — A Turkish drone strike killed three employees of northeast Syria's semi-autonomous Kurdish administration on Tuesday, a spokesman said, amid a recent uptick in attacks targeting Kurdish-held areas.

The strike targeted "a vehicle transporting civilian employees, killing two Kurdish women and a Christian" man, said Farhad Shami, spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the administration's de facto army.

A fourth employee was wounded, he added.

The US-supported SDF led the battle that dislodged Daesh group fighters from the last scraps of their Syrian territory in 2019.

Ankara considers the People's Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, to be an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Tuesday's strike hit a vehicle on a road between the cities of Qamishli and Amuda, along the Turkish border.

The Britain-based monitor said Turkish drone strikes have killed 39 people in Kurdish-held areas this year, including seven civilians and 29 SDF or allied fighters.

Sixteen people died in a single day earlier this month, the observatory previously reported.

Shami however gave a higher civilian death toll of 21 killed in Turkish drone strikes this year, including five children.

Since 2016, Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria.

Syria's 12-year war broke out after President Bashar Assad's repression of peaceful anti-government demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global extremists.

The conflict has killed more than half-a-million people and displaced millions.

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait’s fifth government in less than one year took the oath of office on Monday after elections returned an opposition-controlled parliament, setting the stage for further political turmoil in the oil-rich emirate.

Four royals are among the 15-strong Cabinet, which is appointed by the ruling Al Sabah family and has a history of clashes with the Gulf’s only elected national assembly with powers to hold government to account.

Kuwait is one of the world’s biggest oil producers but decades of political instability, including seven general election cycles in just over a decade, have spooked investors and stymied economic reforms.

Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmad Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah, the son of Kuwait’s 85-year-old emir, is now presiding over his fifth Cabinet since he was appointed last August.

“Positive and constructive cooperation with parliament and all members of society will be at the heart of the government’s work,” he told the swearing-in ceremony.

Saad Al Barrak comes in as oil minister, and Public Works Minister Amani Bougammaz, the only woman in the cabinet, is one of nine people to retain their positions.

Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah, the sports powerbroker and former International Olympic Committee member who in 2021 was convicted of forgery in a Swiss court, returns as defence minister and deputy prime minister.

This month’s legislative elections were held after the constitutional court had annulled the results of the previous polls held in September, also won by the opposition.

In the new parliament, which is due to meet for the first time on Tuesday, opposition figures including Islamists, independents and the assembly’s lone woman hold 29 of the 50 seats.

Kuwait, which borders Saudi Arabia and Iraq, is home to seven percent of the world’s crude reserves. It has little debt and one of the strongest sovereign wealth funds worldwide.

However, it suffers from constant stand-offs between elected lawmakers and Cabinets installed by the ruling family, which maintains a strong grip over political life despite a parliamentary system in place since 1962.