Somali army repels assault on strategic city of Baidoa
Somali national forces repelled a coordinated assault on the key southwestern city of Baidoa on Monday, fighting off fighters loyal to an ousted regional leader alongside Islamist insurgents who had attempted to seize the town, according to FRANCE 24.
The attack, which the federal government said involved “vehicles laden with explosives” driven toward the city, marked one of the most serious attempts in recent memory to dislodge government forces from Baidoa, a long-troubled hub that has served at various points as a seat of transitional administrations and remains a strategic gateway between Mogadishu and the regions further south.
In its statement, the government said its troops had killed nearly 30 militants during the operation. Federal forces, backed by local militia commonly known as Macawisley, have for years held Baidoa against repeated incursions by Islamist insurgents, who have controlled swathes of rural south-central Somalia for nearly two decades.
The latest assault, however, was not limited to the jihadist group. Fighters reported to be loyal to an ousted regional administrator joined the attack, reflecting the volatile political fault lines within Somalia’s federal system, where tensions between the central government in Mogadishu and the country’s member states have frequently spilled over into armed confrontation.
Baidoa, the administrative capital of the Bay region, sits roughly 240 kilometres southwest of Mogadishu and has changed hands several times since the collapse of Siad Barre’s regime in 1991. It gained international attention in the early 1990s during a devastating famine, when it hosted one of the largest humanitarian operations of that era.
Monday’s repulse leaves federal forces in control of the city, though authorities have not disclosed whether additional reinforcements were being deployed to the area or whether civilian casualties were reported in the fighting.
Sources
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