LASANOD (HOL) –At least 20 people have been killed and scores were injured in clashes between two rival tribal militiamen in northern Somalia, leaving thousands of people displaced, officials said Saturday.
The clashes erupted on Friday after gunmen attacked the residence of a local traditional leader in a town in Sool region, followed by retaliatory attacks by militiamen from his clan who attacked a rival clan’s villages, amid efforts by traditional elders to bring the two to negotiating table.
Witnesses told HOL that the clashes involved by battlewagons and hundreds of militiamen spread into new areas, with more than ten people were killed in clashes in Dharkeyn-Genyo, a village, 70km north of Lasanod town, the provincial capital of Sool region.
Rivalry between the two clans that fought in the region before goes back to decades, though in the past troops from the breakaway northern Somalia republic of Somaliland succeeded in keeping some order before militiamen from the secessionist state of Khaatumo recaptured parts of the region.
Led by the former Somali Prime Minister Ali Khalif Galaydh, the regional state which controls a disputed area which Somaliland seized from its neighbouring Puntland has been fighting with Somaliland forces for years.
Somaliland which has declared a unilateral independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 aims to consolidate territory as it seeks the world’s attention to recognize it as an independent state. However, no country has so far recognized it as an independent state.
The enclave sees Khaatumo which says it wanted to be an independent region within Somalia as a security which aims to annex parts of its territory.
