Monday 10,Febr,2025  {HMC} Somali government has strongly condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that Saudi Arabian territory could be used to establish a Palestinian state, calling the remarks a “provocative violation of international law.”

In a statement issued by the Somali Foreign Ministry on Sunday, officials described Netanyahu’s comments as a breach of the United Nations Charter and an affront to Saudi sovereignty.

“In this context, Somalia renews its full solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and reaffirms its commitment to the principles of sovereignty, stability, and respect for international legitimacy,” the statement read.

The Somali government reiterated its firm support for the Palestinian cause, backing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital in accordance with international legal frameworks. It rejected any proposals that seek to forcibly displace Palestinians from their homeland, stating that such actions constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law.

“Somalia expresses its stern rejection of any proposals or schemes aimed at displacing the Palestinian people. These actions undermine ongoing efforts to achieve a just and sustainable peace in the region,” the statement added.

The condemnation aligns with Saudi Arabia’s response, in which the Saudi Foreign Ministry accused Netanyahu of attempting to “divert attention” from what it described as Israel’s “ongoing crimes” in Gaza, including alleged ethnic cleansing.

“The kingdom affirms that the Palestinian people have a right to their land, and they are not intruders or immigrants to it who can be expelled whenever the brutal Israeli occupation wishes,” said the Foreign Ministry.

Several Arab states, including Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq, as well as the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), also condemned Netanyahu’s call for a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia.

Source Hiiraan online

Monday 10,Febr,2025  {HMC} Just two days after President William Ruto was heckled by a crowd he was addressing during his recently concluded 4-day tour of the Northeastern region, elders from the Somali Community have apologised to the President.

Speaking during a press conference in Isiolo on Sunday, the elders led by Abdulkadir Shariff the chairperson of the Somali Council of Elders, announced that they were not happy with the heckling that the President received in the area.

”Our main reason for coming out to speak today is as a result of what happened during the President’s visit while addressing residents at the Prisons land,” Shariff stated.

”We are not happy about what happened especially we the Somalis and all the good people of Isiolo. There was no reason to heckle the Head of State,” he added.

According to the elders, the heckling was caused by intoxicated youths from outside the region, suggesting they may have been transported from elsewhere.

”Drunk youths who even if you keenly look at them are not people from Isiolo. Whatever they did was not right at all and that is why I want to offer my sincerest apologies to our President,” Shariff argued.

”It was just a slight problem but I want to assure you that we are working to ensure that the mistake is ratified.”

At the same time, the elders caucus Secretary General Idle Hassan also condemned the heckling of the President, suggesting that Ruto has been very comprehensive on pastoralist affairs.

”We are condemning in the strongest terms possible the incident where people tried heckling the Head of State. He is our father who equally has his respect and must be respected,” Hassan echoed.

”I am joining the others in offering my apologies due to the incident. That will not be repeated and we want to thank you because you are hardworking and very comprehensive on pastoralists affairs,” he added.

During the incident that happened on Friday, sections of the youth from rival political camps engaged in shouting matches, which prompted Ruto to claim that some had been sent by drug dealers to disrupt the meeting.

“I am aware that drug dealers have sent the youth to come and cause a disturbance at this meeting. Be warned, young people—you cannot threaten the government. A foreigner cannot come and turn Isiolo into a drug den. It won’t happen,” Ruto asserted.

Earlier on the day, Isiolo Senator Fatuma Dullo also got heckled in front of the President as she rose to address the area residents of Isiolo. The crowd began to chant, “Dullo Must Go” as she took the microphone to address them.

Monday 10,Febr,2025  {HMC} The expression Black Hawk Down, the title of a Hollywood film, has become shorthand for a 1993 US military disaster in Somalia.

Eighteen American soldiers lost their lives in the fighting that began on 3 October, but so did hundreds of Somalis.

As Netflix launches a documentary about those events, the BBC has spoken to some Somalis still scarred by what happened.

Despite being surrounded by the debris of an ongoing civil war, Mogadishu’s residents in the early 1990s embraced the moments of serenity.

The warm Sunday sunshine and cooling ocean breeze made for the perfect opportunity for Binti Ali Wardhere, 24 at the time, to visit relatives with her mother.

“That day was calm,” she remembers.

But like everyone else in the city she was unaware that the Americans were getting ready to attack warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed – and what happened would change her life forever.

The US had deployed soldiers to Somalia in 1992. They were there to support a UN mission that offered humanitarian assistance to alleviate a famine – in part caused by the collapse of the central government.

But after Aideed was blamed for being behind the killing of 24 UN peacekeepers in June 1993, he became a focus of military action.

This included a US raid in July in which at least 70 Somalis died, marking a turning-point in the way the Americans were viewed. It also led to the deployment of elite US Rangers.

On 3 October, the US got intelligence that Aideed would be at a meeting with his top officials at a hotel. The Americans launched an airborne operation that was supposed to take 90 minutes – in the end it lasted 17 hours.

For Binti, the first sign that something unusual was happening was the sound of deafening explosions that started just after 15:30 local time.

Mogadishu residents had become accustomed to the sound of fighting, but there was something about the magnitude of these blasts and the shockwaves they caused that felt abnormal.

People began fleeing in all directions.

Determined to understand what was happening, Binti climbed to the rooftop of her relative’s house. From there, she saw that the fighting was taking place in her own neighbourhood.

Two US Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, one at 16:20 and the other at 16:40. The taskforce was surrounded and then a rescue mission began.

Fearing for her family, Binti ran for home.

“To this day, I still see the bodies scattered in the streets,” she says.

Binti reached her house just after 18:00 and was relieved to find everyone safe.

The fighting eased a little bit, bringing a brief moment of calm.

She served tea as her husband discussed the war with a neighbour. But he did not have a chance to taste the tea as a shell hit their house.

Binti felt her hand get partially severed. She fell to the ground, a woman collapsed on top of her.

“There was hot water running over my head. I thought to myself: ‘Who opened the water pipe?'”

She then realised it was the blood of the person on top of her, who had died. It was Binti’s neighbour who had come to their house for safety.

That night, Binti also lost her husband, Mohamed Aden, and two sons – 14-year-old Abdulkadir Mohamed and 13-year-old Abdurahman Mohamed.

Four of her other children, along with her brother, who had been staying with them, were injured. Her brother later succumbed to his injuries.

Ifrah, who was just four years old at the time, was permanently blinded.

Binti’s eldest son, now a father himself, continues to struggle with mental health issues. To this day, the sight or sound of an aeroplane sends him into hiding.

He did not know it on that quiet Sunday morning, but prominent cameraman Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, also known as Ahmed Five, was to play a major role in how the events were seen.

Twenty-nine at the time, he had already documented clan wars, famine and the chaotic events of Mogadishu and its suburbs.

That day, he was not thinking about work when the explosions rattled the air.

The sounds of helicopter gunfire and heavy machine guns signalled something more intense than the crackle of AK-47 that he normally heard.

Ahmed always carried his camera, knowing that in Mogadishu anything could happen at any moment. He instinctively began documenting the unfolding chaos and headed towards the heart of the battle.

“Although this situation was completely different from the ones I had worked in before, I still decided to record these events and take on that responsibility,” he tells the BBC.

The closest event he had ever witnessed to this was the July raid which galvanised anti-American sentiment and set the stage for October’s confrontation.

On the first day, he filmed some of the fighting between the US soldiers and the Somalis.

Then on the second day, he was led to a house where US pilot Michael Durant was being held.

Mr Durant had been flying the second Black Hawk that had come down after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. After crashing, his three crew members were killed in the fighting along with two others who had gone to rescue them.

“It was a huge gun battle. They say that 25 Somalis were killed by gunfire at crash site two, so that gives you some insight into how much shooting was going on,” Mr Durant later told the BBC.

He was saved when a gunman recognised that the pilot might have value as a prisoner.

Ahmed then filmed the nervous and battered American who had several scars on his face. He can be seen confirming his identity while breathing heavily and glancing to his side at an interrogator, who is out of shot.

Until that point, neither the US nor Aideed knew Mr Durant was being held, Ahmed says.

“I handed the videotapes to a UN plane that flew daily from Mogadishu to Nairobi [in neighbouring Kenya].

“The first report of the Mogadishu battle to reach the world was from the footage I recorded. At the time, I was working as a freelancer for CNN.”

The images captured by Ahmed made headlines around the world.

They also fed into the debate about US combat policy in the African continent, which shifted after the fighting in Mogadishu.

“This is something I take pride in – though at the time, I didn’t anticipate its impact,” Ahmed says.

Within six months, the US had withdrawn its forces from Somalia. The perceived failure of the Somali mission made the US wary of intervening in subsequent African crises.

The third of October started as a day of celebration in Saida Omar Mohamud’s household as that morning she gave birth to a baby girl.

Relatives and neighbours gathered at her home to congratulate her, as the family prepared for a traditional name-giving ceremony.

But the mood shifted once the fighting started.

Chaos erupted as the first helicopter crashed in front of Saida’s home.

Within moments, she remembers at least 10 US soldiers storming into the house.

They gathered everyone into the living room, ordering them not to move and turned it into an impromptu field hospital.

The family watched in shock as wounded soldiers were laid on their dining table, receiving emergency medical treatment.

“Although they were afraid, they made us scared as well. They turned our house into a stronghold,” Saida says.

As well as her own searing memories, Saida left a permanent reminder of that day with what she decided to call her daughter,

As Somalis say, “no name is given without a reason” and so Saida’s little girl is now known as Amina Rangers.

The Netflix documentary features “raw, immersive storytelling with first-person interviews from both sides of the Battle of Mogadishu”, according to the publicity. It sheds light on the horrors experienced by Somalis like Binti during the conflict.

“This time, Somalis were given the opportunity to share their account of events. It is crucial that both sides of the story are always told,” Ahmed Five says.

But for Binti Ali, simply telling the story is not enough.

She lost loved ones in the war. Yet she feels the devastation inflicted on Somali families like hers remains largely unacknowledged.

“It was the Americans who destroyed my house, killed my husband, my two sons, and my brother, and left my family in lasting misery,” she says, her voice breaking.

“At the very least, they must admit what they have done and compensate us.”

Source BBC NEWS

Monday 10,Febr,2025  {HMC} Saudi Arabia has condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that the kingdom’s land be used to establish a Palestinian state.

In a statement on Sunday, the Saudi Foreign Ministry accused Netanyahu of attempting to “divert attention” from Israel’s ongoing “crimes” in Gaza, including “ethnic cleansing”.

“The kingdom affirms that the Palestinian people have a right to their land, and they are not intruders or immigrants to it who can be expelled whenever the brutal Israeli occupation wishes,” said the Foreign Ministry.

On Thursday, Netanyahu responded to an interviewer on Israel’s Channel 14 who misspoke by saying “Saudi state” instead of “Palestinian state”.

“The Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have a lot of land over there,” Netanyahu said.

The interviewer replied that it was an idea worth exploring.

The exchange drew angry reactions from Arab states, including Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq, as well as the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

“These dangerous and irresponsible statements confirm the approach of the Israeli occupation forces in their disrespect for international and UN laws and treaties and the sovereignty of states,” said GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry thanked the “brotherly countries” for denouncing Netanyahu’s remarks.

Discussions of the fate of Palestinians in Gaza had already been upended by an earlier shock proposal from United States President Donald Trump for the US to “take over” and “own” Gaza, resettling Palestinians elsewhere in a move that would amount to ethnic cleansing. That suggestion, amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has also been roundly condemned by Arab leaders.

Trump has also said Saudi Arabia would not require the formation of a Palestinian state as a precondition to normalise ties with Israel, a claim Riyadh has repeatedly denied.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,700 Palestinians including about 18,000 children, and wrecked much of the enclave’s infrastructure. More than 14,000 more people are missing and are presumed to be dead.

The Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 that sparked the war killed 1,139 people and seized more than 250 captives, dozens of whom are still believed to be in the enclave.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies