GAROWE, Puntland, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Somalia’s al
Qaeda-linked militants are moving north into the semi-autonomous
region of Puntland, long regarded as a relatively peaceful area,
after having been squeezed out of their strongholds further
south, the president of Puntland said.

Until now, Puntland has largely escaped the worst of the
upheaval in Somalia, which has been deprived of an effective
central government for the past two decades.

KAMPALA/MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somalia’s prime minister said on Saturday that it could be a challenge for his country if Uganda followed through on a threat to withdraw troops fighting Islamist rebels in southern Somalia.

Uganda’s foreign affairs ministry said earlier that it would withdraw from peace keeping initiatives in Africa unless the United Nations amended a report accusing it of supporting rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The European Union has given Somalia 158 million euros ($200 million) to improve education, the legal system and security, its new envoy said on Saturday, as the Horn of Africa nation tries to recover from more than two decades of conflict.

The new aid program follows the election in September of a new Somali president, the culmination of a regionally brokered, U.N.-backed effort to restore central government control and end fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people.

MARKA, Somalia (Reuters) – “Paradise lies under the shade of swords,” reads the Arabic inscription on an arch leading into the Somali port of Marka, abandoned last month by Islamist al Shabaab militants under pressure from advancing African Union peacekeepers and government troops.

The inscription, along with a white column by the beach where al Shabaab held public executions, is one of the reminders of the al Qaeda-allied rebels’ four-year occupation of the coastal town, 90 km (55 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu.

MOGADISHU, Sept 19 (Reuters) – They get death threats, they
need armed escorts and they never take the same route twice -
Somali journalists reporting on events in their largely lawless
country have to take extreme measures to survive.

The scene of near unremitting conflict for the last 20
years, Somalia has made headlines as the scene of suicide
bombings, street battles and pirate attacks on shipping.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The peacekeeper guarding the Mogadishu hotel smiled and said: “Leave your body armor behind. It’s safe here.”

Mogadishu was a city beginning to relax, and the soldier’s advice to reporters arriving to meet Somalia’s new-elected President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud reflected that. But moments into his news conference, the bombings and shooting began.

MOGADISHU, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Somalia’s new President
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the visiting Kenyan foreign minister
on Wednesday escaped an apparent suicide bomb attack on a
Mogadishu hotel where they were holding a news conference
unscathed, witnesses said.

Somalia’s al Shabaab rebels said they had carried out the
attack, which killed at least eight people and came just two
days after Mohamud was elected in the first presidential vote in
Somalia in decades.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Islamist rebels on Tuesday dismissed Somalia’s presidential election as a ploy by the West to boost its economic and strategic interests in the country.

They branded the new leader, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a traitor and said they would keep up their war to make Somalia a strict Islamic state.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Members of parliament overwhelmingly elected political newcomer Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as president of Somalia on Monday, a result hailed by supporters as a vote for change in the war-ravaged country.

Bursts of celebratory gunfire crackled through the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, after the first vote of its kind in decades in Somalia drew to a close.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somalia’s lawmakers voted overwhelmingly on Monday for political newcomer Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to be the country’s next president, with the streets of the capital erupting into celebratory gunfire.

The country’s lawmakers were voting in the first poll of its kind in decades. The vote was billed by the United Nations as a milestone in the war-ravaged country’s quest to end more than 20 years of violence, graft and clan feuds.