MOGADISHU, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Somali federal troops drove opposition forces out of one of the country’s biggest cities, Baidoa, on Monday, following heavy clashes that left many people dead, residents told Reuters.
Baidoa, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by conflict and hunger in other areas, was shaken by hours of fighting between the federal soldiers and opposition forces loyal to the former president of South West state, Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen.
Residents said the clashes in the city centre on Monday were the fiercest since March, when federal forces seized control of Baidoa after Laftagareen’s administration said it was severing ties with the federal government. Laftagareen then resigned from office.
Already struggling to contain a two-decade-old insurgency by the al Shabaab militant group and stave off famine, the federal government has been facing growing armed resistance from state governments.
State authorities have rejected Mogadishu’s influence over state elections and rejected constitutional changes they say concentrate power in the hands of the executive.
Somalia’s defence ministry said in a statement that troops in Baidoa had come under attack before dawn by fighters using vehicles laden with explosives. It said its forces had driven the assailants out of Baidoa, killing about 30 of them.
Videos posted on social media and verified by Reuters showed federal soldiers firing from the back of an armoured vehicle and people carrying injured civilians through the streets.
Four Baidoa residents said federal troops had driven the opposition fighters out of town, and reported seeing dead bodies.
“I saw 10 dead people including four civilians and six soldiers from both groups,” local elder Farah Ibrahim told Reuters.
Laftagareen’s camp, which earlier in the morning said on Facebook that its forces had captured the city centre, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Baidoa faces a dire humanitarian crisis, with one in four children at its displacement sites severely malnourished, according to a July survey by the French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.
(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Aaron Ross, Toby Chopra and Andrew Heavens)
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