Somalia Starts Eviction of Squatters

Mogadishu---Somalia has embarked on a major operation to evict tens of thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who had inhabited government buildings in the capital, Mogadishu.

According to local aid agencies, over 50,000 people fleeing conflict and drought have been sheltering in government buildings that housed ministries, schools and universities in Mogadishu, many of which have been ruined in years of fighting.

Mohamud Nur, Mayor of Mogadishu told BBC Somali that IDPs were first being evicted from buildings which the government had the money to rebuild, and that no alternative housing was being provided, owing to the fact that the squatters were able to pay rent to illegal landlords who were allocating them housing in those buildings.

So far, some people are leaving the buildings at will, where Mr. Nur said force would be used on those who refuse to move. One school in the capital is said to have been used temporarily to house over 17,000 IDPs.

President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed toured one of the settlements to encourage people to leave, but some residents rejected his call to vacate saying they had nowhere else to go.

"These are government offices where public services will be offered," he said, adding that the reconstruction would provide jobs. The rebuilding operation which is mainly funded by Turkey comes following improvement of security situation in the country over the past year, owing to the 12000-strong African Union forces that are helping prop the transitional government plagued by resistances from armed factions including the al-Shabab fighting to instil an Islamic Somali state.

Last week the United Nations said the famine conditions declared mostly in southern Somalia in the past six months was over following recent heavy rains experienced in the region and significant humanitarian operations in the region that had faced a worst drought in six decades.

The UN termed the gains as being “fragile” and would be reversed without continued support, where some 1.7 million people in southern Somalia were still under crisis and the situation is expected to decline in May.

The evictions come after the Islamist militia al-Shabab banned relief operations of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from regions it controls citing that the aid agency had falsely accused the militants of hindering food distributions, saying also it had been handing out outdated food.

British Foreign Minister William Hague who made a surprise visit to Somalia last week pledged support for the war-torn state ahead of this month’s London Somalia conference, aimed to resolve the long-standing Somali conflict.

Kano, Nigeria

Nigeria: Fresh Attacks on Police in Kano

Armed militants blew up a police headquarters with explosives and attacked a police officer in Nigeria’s second most populated city of Kano that has been plagued by militant attacks.

Late last month, Islamic sect Boko Haram in several coordinated bomb and gun attacks left over 185 dead in the city that has been highly targeted by the dreaded militia’s latest attacks.

A senior police officer told the Reuters news agency on Monday that the city’s police station in Sharada, an industrial neighbourhood had been burned down by attackers armed with explosives and automatic weapons, who also shot one officer in the leg.

"The gunmen came from different directions to attack the police station with bombs and gun shot some minutes after 6pm," Kano police spokesman Magaji Musa Majia'a told Reuters by telephone. "One policeman was shot on the leg and he is receiving treatment in hospital.”

Residents in the area reported of a shootout between the police and the attackers where huge explosions followed by gunshots were heard around the police station area. A separate gun battle was reported near a suspected Boko Haram hideout in the outskirts of Kano.

The gunmen are suspected to be Boko Haram members, a radical Islamic group loosely modelled on Afghanistan’s Taliban. The group fights to instil Islamic law throughout Nigeria, a multi-ethnic nation with a population of over 150 million people. 

Multiple blasts were also reported separately in northeastern city of Maiduguri, seen as the militia’s stronghold at a market area in Gamboru where several shops and vehicles were destroyed in the explosions. The Joint Task Force, a special military unit set up to crack on the group has confirmed the attack and its troops are in the area to maintain order.

Boko Haram, which loosely translates to “western education is forbidden”, has been more radical in the recent past two months, with attacks targeting police installations in mainly predominant Muslim northern part of the country.

Last week Wednesday police in Nigeria said they had arrested a spokesman of the group who goes by the pseudonym ‘Abu Qaqa’ in Maiduguri, Borno state, but on Thursday a man claimed to be him told journalists in a phone conference that it was Abu Dardaa, the group's head of "public enlightenment” who was in police custody.