Somalia's interim parliament is meeting in Baidoa to discuss whether to ask the African Union to send foreign peacekeeping troops into Mogadishu. But the head of the Islamist militia controlling Mogadishu, Sharif Shaikh Ahmed, has rejected any deployment.

The Islamic courts in Somalia may have taken control of the capital, Mogadishu, but they face immediate challenges of whether to set up an administration in the city or hold talks with the Baidoa-based transitional government, analysts said. "They are not immune from Somali politics," said Suliman Baldo, Africa programme director for the International Crisis Group (ICG). "In the past, they have been hardline. It is doubtful that they have become more moderate. For them, the hard part is just beginning."

More than a decade after US troops withdrew from Somalia following a disastrous military intervention, officials of Somalia's interim government and some US analysts of Africa policy say the United States has returned to the African country, secretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital, Mogadishu, reports the Washington Post.

The number of Somalis who are getting out by sea to Yemen has increased in the last few days because of the current bloody warfare in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Sources said that the death toll at sea during trips from Somalia to Yemen through the Gulf of Aden was getting higher.

Armed Somali fighters have occupied a major hospital that offers surgical services to civilians who have been wounded in recent clashes in northern Mogadishu, according to reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Somali Red Crescent Society (SRCS). The occupation of the Keysaney Hospital has reduced medical services in the capital city and prompted relatives to move patients away hastily.

Members of militias fighting for control of the Somali capital could face war crimes charges for attempting to prevent the wounded and civilians from receiving assistance during the conflict, a U.N. official warned Monday (29 May). The battle between fundamentalist Islamic militias and rival secular combatants has forced about 1,500 to seek treatment at Mogadishu's two main hospitals since the beginning of this year, said Eric Laroche, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia.

Clashes between militias in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, have left 13 people dead, days after some of the heaviest fighting seen in the city for years. The latest violence has been centred in the Daynile and Galgalato districts. Some 200 people have died in clashes this year between militias loyal to Mogadishu's Islamic courts and an alliance of warlords. The fighting is the worst the city has seen for more than a decade.

Warlords involved in Somalia's worst fighting in a decade should be sacked as government ministers and charged with war crimes, members of the country's fledgling parliament said on Friday (19 May). Around 150 people, many of them civilians, died last week in Mogadishu during pitched battles between Islamic fighters and warlord militias, which many analysts and Somalis believe are funded by the United States. The fighting has recently died down but the lawless capital remains tense.

Reporters Without Borders and its Somali partner organization, the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), paid tribute to journalists trying to work in strife-torn Mogadishu, where an alliance of warlords is battling an Islamist militia, and offered advice on how to do their jobs effectively. "The effect of the fighting on the media's capacity to report confidently and independently is worrying," said press freedom organisations Reporters Without Borders and the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).

The death toll continued to rise in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, as fighting between rival militias entered its third day, local sources said. "As of last night [Monday], the death toll stood at 41. It will get higher, since the fighting is still going on," said a doctor at Keysaney Hospital in the north of the city, where most of the injured were being treated. "If the fighting continues, the hospitals will not be able to cope," the doctor said. "Some of the hospitals have already run out of medicines," warned the doctor.

A teenage Somali boy has stabbed to death his father's killer in a public execution ordered by an Islamic court. Large crowds gathered at a Koranic school in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, to watch Mohamed Moallim, 16, stab Omar Hussein in the head and throat. Hussein had been convicted of killing the boy's father, Sheikh Osman Moallim, after a row about Mohamed's education. Islamic courts have brought a semblance of order to Mogadishu, imposing Sharia law after years of rule by warlords. However there is some opposition to the courts.

Kjell Magne Bondevik, the U.N. special humanitarian envoy for the Horn of Africa, has said after a visit to Somalia, "It was especially moving to visit the country where several thousand ... displaced were living under the worst conditions I have ever seen." He added that governments must do more to ensure drought and hunger are eradicated in the long-term.

A visiting Somalia minister has joined the World Health Organisation and Unicef in appealing for Sh720 million to eradicate polio in the strife-torn country. The Somalia health minister told a press conference in Nairobi that the threat of the disease spreading to neighbouring countries was serious and must be stopped. Already, he said, some cases had been reported in Ethiopia. The minister said 191 cases of polio had been confirmed in Somalia since last July.

At least seven people were killed and scores wounded as rival armed groups fought on Sunday in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, displacing dozens of families. The violence erupted in Hamarweyne district in south Mogadishu when local residents opposed the setting up of a checkpoint by armed militias reportedly loyal to Mogadishu faction leader Abdi Nure Siyad, also known as "Abdi Wal". Siyad is a member of a newly created group - the Alliance for Peace and Fight Against International Terrorism - which comprises several Mogadishu-based faction leaders.

Hearing-impaired children in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, now have reason to enjoy a normal childhood, thanks to the opening of the country's first and only school for students with hearing difficulties. "For many families, our school is the only one - not only in Mogadishu, but throughout the country - that offers normal classes to their children," said Usman Muhammad Mahamud, the school's director, on Tuesday. Mahamud, along with other Somalis from abroad, decided to open a school that catered to hearing-impaired children. The demand for a place at the school "has been amazing," he said.

Zara Ali Muki lost her leg in 2004, when freelance militia fired on a vehicle she was riding in in Mogadishu, Somalia. Her life was in danger once again at the end of March, when she was forced to flee the latest factional fighting in the capital city. The clashes between the Islamic court militia and militia loyal to an alliance of Mogadishu-based warlords killed more than 100 people and displaced hundreds of families from the capital. IRIN news interviewed Zara.

In January this year, Abshiro Xasan Guleed had just settled into a sound sleep after a long day of work when she was awoken by incessant knocks on her door. Her first thought as a traditional birth attendant (TBA) for the last 15 years, was that the man had come to request her to attend to his wife who was in labour. But when she opened the door after they identified themselves, she got a totally different message. The man had walked more than two kilometres to report to her about his six year-old daughter who had been knifed three times by a man attempting to rape her.

The Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSAU), implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and funded by the European Commission and USAID, launches it’s vast Digital Library (DILI) online. While previously accessible only from the FSAU Resource Center in the Nairobi office, DILI is now accessible anywhere in the world via the FSAU web site.

According to an IRIN report, the Somali capital of Mogadishu was calm on Monday as a ceasefire that came into effect after four days of heavy militia fighting continued to hold, but hundreds of families who fled their homes were yet to return, local sources said. Most of the displaced families had been living in the city's northern outskirts where the fighting was concentrated. "For the second day, the guns are silent in Mogadishu. How long that will last is a different matter," a local resident who requested anonymity said on Monday.

More than 900 refugees have fled to Kenya following the recent militia attacks in Somalia's capital Mogadishu. Security personnel deployed at the Kenya-Somalia border continued patrolling the area in a bid to control the influx.
North Eastern Province CID boss, Henry Ondiek, said 1,000 refugees had surrendered themselves at the Dadaab United Nations refugee camp in Garissa District.