Somali federal troops drove opposition forces out of \u200cone of the country’s biggest cities, Baidoa, on Monday, following heavy clashes that left many people dead, residents told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Baidoa, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by conflict and hunger \u200bin other areas, was shaken by hours of fighting between the federal soldiers \u200band opposition forces loyal to the former president of South West state, \u2060Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen.<\/p>\n
Residents said the clashes in the city centre on Monday were the \u200bfiercest since March, when federal forces\u00a0seized control of Baidoa\u00a0after Laftagareen’s administration said it was \u200bsevering ties with the federal government. Laftagareen then resigned from office.<\/p>\n
Already struggling to contain a two-decade-old insurgency by the al Shabaab militant group and stave off famine, the federal government has been facing growing \u200barmed resistance from state governments.<\/p>\n
State authorities have rejected Mogadishu’s influence over\u00a0state elections\u00a0and rejected\u00a0constitutional changes \u200bthey say concentrate power in the hands of the executive.<\/p>\n
Somalia’s defence ministry said in a statement that \u200ctroops \u2060in Baidoa had come under attack before dawn by fighters using vehicles laden with explosives. It said its forces had driven the assailants out of Baidoa, killing about 30 of them.<\/p>\n
Videos posted on social media and verified by Reuters showed federal soldiers firing from the \u200bback of an armoured \u200bvehicle and people carrying \u2060injured civilians through the streets.<\/p>\n
Four Baidoa residents said federal troops had driven the opposition fighters out of town, and reported seeing dead \u200bbodies.<\/p>\n
“I saw 10 dead people including four civilians and six soldiers \u200bfrom both \u2060groups,” local elder Farah Ibrahim told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Laftagareen’s camp, which earlier in the morning said on Facebook that its forces had captured the city centre, could not be immediately reached for comment.<\/p>\n
Baidoa \u2060faces a \u200bdire humanitarian crisis, with one in four children at \u200bits displacement sites severely malnourished, according to a July survey by the French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Somali federal troops drove opposition forces out of \u200cone of the country’s biggest cities, Baidoa, on Monday, following heavy clashes that left many people dead, residents told Reuters. Baidoa, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by conflict and hunger \u200bin other areas, was shaken by hours of fighting between the federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129],"tags":[5403,4719,189],"class_list":["post-21778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-abdiaziz-hassan-mohamed-laftagareen","tag-baidoa","tag-somalia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21780,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778\/revisions\/21780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}