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Heavy fighting between Somaliland troops and a tribal militia broke out early early Sunday morning in the village of Sool-Joogto in Buhodle region and in the outskirt of Tukaraq village where Somaliland forces are stationed.
The battle erupted after tribal militia loyal to Somalia’s former Prime Minister, Ali Khalif Galayr launched pre-dawn surprise assault on Somaliland military bases in the outskirts of Buhodle town and on the outskirt of Tukaraq Village.
Tuareg separatist rebels in Mali say they have surrounded the historic town of Timbuktu after a rapid advance through the north of the country.
Eyewitnesses in the town told BBC they heard gunfire on the outskirts, believed to be the Malian army firing warning shots.
The rebels said on their website they meant to dislodge the Malian political and military presence in the town.
Two other important centres, Kidal and Gao, fell to them in recent days.
Tuareg separatists launched attacks in the town of Gao in northern Mali on Saturday, taking advantage of the chaos left over by a 10-day old military coup.
Rebels arrived in the strategic garrison town in pick-up trucks loaded with arms. A reporter from the Reuters news agency described hearing heavy weapons fire. This new assault came after the rebels took Kidal, another key town in the north on Friday.
Fresh clashes Thursday between rival Libyan tribes killed eight people, a hospital official said, even as authorities spoke of an imminent truce in the southern desert town of Sabha.
“The situation is very bad. At least eight bodies were brought to the hospital over the past three hours,” said a doctor at the Sabha hospital, Abdel Rahman Arish, reached by telephone.
He told AFP several people were also wounded in the fighting that has raged since Monday between the Toubou tribe and Arab tribesmen from Sabha.
The Sudanese government on Monday announced that president Omer Hassan al-Bashir’s scheduled summit with his southern counterpart Salva Kiir on 3 April has been cancelled in wake of the most serious confrontation between the armies of the two neighbouring states on Monday, since partition in July last year.
On Monday Kiir claimed that the military escalation was provoked by Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) coordinated aerial attacks on Jau and Pan Akuach followed by a ground forces assault against another area called Teshwin.
The pro-Somali government forces of Ahlu Sunna Waljam’a (ASWJ) backed by Ethiopian troops have taken full control of a strategic town in central Somalia after Al-Shabaab fighters vacated the town following no heavy battles, an official confirmed.
Heavily armed Ethiopian troops along with Ahlu Sunna soldiers chased away hundreds of al-Shabaab fighters from El-Bur town in Galgadud region, centralsomalia, and seized the town late on Monday afternoon.
Sheik Ahmed (Ilka-ase), the deputy chairman of executive council for Ahlu Sunna, told Shabelle Media by phone while he was in El-Bur that al-Shabaab fighters abandoned the town without any bloody clashes on Monday as columns of Ethiopian and Somali forces advanced.
Soldiers stormed state television and announced early Thursday that they had seized control of the country, dissolving all of its institutions due to the nation’s mishandling of an insurgency in the north.
On national television, a group of about 20 soldiers were shown in fatigues crowding around a desk facing the camera. They introduced themselves as the National Committee for the Reestablishment of Democracy and the Restoration of the State, or CNRDR.