A suspected cholera outbreak has killed about a dozen people in the southern Somali village of Hoosingo, in the district of Badade in Lower Juba, say government and health officials. 'One of the biggest problems we have is that we do not what this disease is,' Adan Ibrahim Dhaqane, the Hoosingo Village commissioner, told IRIN by telephone. Dhaqane said that at least 19 people had died since the outbreak started on 5 September, with 12 others sick.

Forces working together with the Somalia forces have confronted Al Shabaab fighters in Birta Dheer, some 60 kilometres west of the port town of Kismayu. The Saturday operation included the Amisom troops and Ras Kamboni Brigade. Birta Dheer is a heavily fortified post that had been under the control of Al-Shabaab for the past three years.

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) has condemned sustained deadly violence against journalists following the killing of young journalist in Mogadishu. Zakariye Mohamed Mohamud Moallim, a young cameraman, working as freelance journalist was shot dead on Sunday evening (16 September 2012) in Nasib Bundo neighbourhood of Shibis district in Mogadishu. Men armed with pistols shot the journalist in the head and chest, according to family members. Zakariye died on the spot and the killers escaped from the scene, as said by eyewitnesses.

Somalia’s new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud says he is willing to begin talks with the armed group al-Shabab. In an exclusive video interview with Al Jazeera's Peter Greste, he outlines his key concerns for Somalia.

Somalia's new parliamentary leadership has effectively been booby trapped by a flawed governance model imposed by the international community.

Somalia’s presidential elections have been marred by allegations of bribery, with up to $50,000 said to have changed hands among members of parliament, Al Jazeera has learnt. Senior diplomatic sources deployed in the region to ensure honest and fair election, have confirmed that the process of vote buying has been under way over the last few days. It was hoped that the vote for a new president, the first of its kind in decades, would alter the political landscape of the nation and be a milestone in the war-ravaged country's quest to end two decades of violence, corruption and infighting.

About 90 Somali migrants stranded on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea for more than four days have been rescued, an Italian news agency and relatives say. Earlier this month, 54 people died of dehydration while trying to sail from Libya to Italy in an inflatable boat. More than one million Somalis have fled the country since 1991.

Successive Somali governments have not accounted for nearly $238 million, the bulk of which constituted bilateral assistance, according to an audit report made available exclusively to the East African.

Somalia's interim government has denied allegations of corruption contained in a leaked UN report. It alleged that around 70 per cent of money intended for development and reconstruction in a country racked by 20 years of war was unaccounted for. 'The systematic misappropriation, embezzlement and outright theft of public resources have essentially become a system of governance,' the leaked report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, published by the Somalia Report website, said.

Somalia's population exodus has crossed a new threshold, hitting the one million mark as more people continue to flee to the surrounding region, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said. The most recent arrivals continue to cite insecurity and dwindling food resources as the main reasons for their flight. Despite last week passing the 1 million mark for the first time since Somalia descended into violence in 1991, data compiled by UNHCR for the main arrival countries of Kenya and Ethiopia also shows lower but steady numbers of people leaving Somalia.

About 120,000 people in the coastal, mid- and far western regions of the self-declared republic of Somaliland require emergency food assistance after four years of failed rains, says Mohamed Mousa Awale, chairman of Somaliland's environment research and disaster preparedness agency. The most affected areas include the Salel Region localities of Asha-Ado, Lughaya, Garba-Dadar, Gargaara and Waraqa-dhigta where some 450 tons of food aid from Djibouti was distributed on 6 July.

For the second time Kenyan fighter jets have targeted districts in southern Somalia, Radio Garowe reports. According to military sources, there are also contradicting reports saying that the strikes led to many civilian casualties, with a few Al Shabaab agents being killed in the strikes.

Somalis living in the world’s largest refugee camp risk being recruited by armed groups and bandits as children grow up without education in increasingly desperate conditions, eight aid agencies said. Kenya’s overcrowded Dadaab camp, whose population swelled to 465,000 as a result of last year’s famine in war-torn Somalia, has been hit by a wave of bomb blasts and grenade attacks. 'You have lots of youth in Dadaab who can’t work - they don’t have an education, they’ve got limited ways of feeding their families,' Alun McDonald, Oxfam’s East Africa spokesman, told AlertNet.

The New York-based press freedom body, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has said that two unidentified gunmen shot a Somali journalist, Abdulkadir Omar Abdulle, PANA reports. The CPJ said in a communique that Abdulkadir, who works for Universal TV as a reporter and anchor, was shot on Saturday evening near his home in the southern Wadajir district of the capital, Mogadishu, but he survived the attack.

Hundreds of families from villages in Somalia's Bal'ad District, in Middle Shabelle Region, have been displaced following recent fighting between African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces and Al-Shabab insurgents, say officials. 'Our settlements are now the front line between the AMISOM/TFG alliance forces and Al-Shabab and we don't know where to go,' Hussein Mayow, a father of six, told IRIN. The displacement followed 25 June clashes in Bal'ad, about 40km northwest of Mogadishu, with the worst affected areas being the villages of Wala-Moy and Hamar-Daye, said an official with the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Youth and Sport, who preferred anonymity.

An al-Shabab suicide bomber has rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into the gate of a Somali government base in Afgoye, west of Mogadishu, the capital, causing casualties. Al-Shabab said its suicide bomber had 'killed dozens' in Saturday's attack, while the police said the blast had only wounded three soldiers. The figures could not be independently verified. Many parties in the Somalia conflict tend to exaggerate enemy losses and minimise their own.

A senior official of the radical Islamist Al-Shabaab group has announced that his movement was ready to reward anybody bringing in information leading to the killing or capture of top American leaders. Sheikh Fu’ad Mohamed Khalaf alias Shongole specifically mentioned US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Sheikh Shongole was reacting to a statement from the US State Department putting a bounty of $33 million for the capture of top Al-Shabaab leaders. 'We are offering 10 camels for any information concerning (Barack) Obama,' said Shongole.

Why has peace in Somalia been so hard to come by? Someone needs to get rid of the Western powers and their roadmap to nowhere.

Somali militants Al-Shabaab are amassing troops in lower Juba region, reports indicate. Consequently, tension was mounting among the civilians over an imminent major military operation. 'Militants loyal to Al-Shabaab (the radical Islamist group) were Wednesday seen positioning ‘technicals’ (battle wagons mounted with machine guns, in and around the town,' a resident in Kismayu, who did not disclose his identity for security reasons, told the local media.

In the light of growing Turkish influence and the confusing pattern of conflicting interests and international gatherings, will Somalis receive the help and respect they so desperately need from the Istanbul II conference?