SEAL Team Six parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness Wednesday and rescued an American woman and a Danish man from an outdoor camp where they were being held by Somali pirates, the official said.

The same team executed the mission last May in which al-Qaida leader bin Laden was killed.

The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the top secret operation.

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The aid group said Friday that the exact circumstances of the gunfire a day earlier is not immediately clear. However, a security guard, Ahmed Ali, said Thursday that a disgruntled former employee of Doctors Without Borders, a Somali dismissed the day before, had returned and opened fire.

The aid group identified the victims as Philippe Havet, 53, of Belgium, and Andrias Karel Keiluhu, 44, an Indonesian doctor best known as Kace.

In its statement, Doctors Without Borders said one victim died on the spot and the second at a hospital after surgery.

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The is one of several stories highlighted Wednesday in an annual New York fundraising event held by the aid group International Rescue Committee, which helped nurse Minhaj back to health.

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Famine has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Somali children this year, but the U.N. said despite restrictions by Islamist insurgents, heavy rains and fighting, aid agencies are expanding their reach. Food aid is now getting to 2.2 million of the 4 million Somalis who need it, the U.N. said.

“His mother never thought he would recover. Every member of his family is happy,” said Sirat Amin, a nurse-nutritionist with the International Rescue Committee who has been monitoring Minhaj’s progress. “He can sit without being supported, he can have (nutritional supplement) Plumpynut on his own. He’s crawling.”

In July, the month that the U.N. declared parts of Somalia famine zones, Minhaj was one of dozens of limp babies lying under mosquito net shrouds in the sweltering wards of the IRC hospital in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. Seven-month-old Minhaj weighed only 3.2 kilograms (7.05 pounds), less than some newborns.

Pictures of his gaunt cheeks and bulging eyes made him the face of the famine. But after weeks of intensive feeding with Plumpynut — a kind of sweetened peanut butter packed with nutrients — he is nearly 8 kilograms (17.64 pounds), almost normal for a boy his age.

Since the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands of Somali families have poured over the border, fleeing war and hunger. Domes made from dirty tarpaulins and scraps of cloth mushroomed on the scrublands of northern Kenya and the U.N.’s famine announcement brought planeloads of television crews to capture images of their suffering.

Now the torrent of refugees fleeing into Kenya has slowed to a trickle and the camera crews have gone home. But that doesn’t mean the emergency is over.

Nearly 2 million Somalis still don’t have access to food aid. Rain has turned tracks through the bush to slush and there’s been fighting along the border after hundreds of Kenyan soldiers crossed into Somalia. Last month’s incursion followed a string of kidnappings on Kenyan soil by Somali gunmen.

Families wanting to flee may fear being caught up in the fighting or be stuck in the mud. Only the strongest are getting through. When they arrive, they are not only starving but sick and exhausted, Amin said. So although less are coming, when they arrive in the refugee camps in Kenya many are in a more severe state of starvation.

The ward where Amin works has been expanded by two tents, but even so, 78 children are sharing 56 beds. That’s about twice as many as when Minhaj was admitted. Some children are in even worse condition than he was.

Many of the new arrivals come in with diarrhea, cases of cholera, or secondary infections. Amin and other aid agencies say that deaths from illness are likely to rocket as weakened immune systems contend with the cold rains and diseases spread by puddles of dirty water.

The U.N. Children’s Fund said around 168,0000 acutely malnourished children under the age of 5 could die within weeks. They are concerned about infectious diseases like measles, cholera and malaria, particularly in the dirty and overcrowded camps in the capital of Mogadishu.

“The famine is not over … Children are dying on a daily basis,” said Hannan Sulieman, UNICEF’s deputy representative for the Somalia mission. “Malnutrition has been way above emergency levels for over 10 years.”

She said that her organization was planning to maintain current levels of aid until August or September next year, when Somalia would have had a long and a short rain harvest.

The famine is the worst emergency to hit Somalia for a generation. The U.N. has appealed for $1 billion and has got $779 million so far.

But aid still doesn’t reach many of the starving. Islamist militias battling the weak U.N.-backed government have forbidden many aid agencies to operate in their territory, exacerbating the effects of a severe drought.

So even after their parents have struggled through the mud, have made it past the militias and have staggered into the hospital, it is still too late for many, said Amin.

“I’m coping with it but sometimes it’s heartbreaking. People are suffering. Sometimes they die in front of you,” he said. “Sometimes you want to help but the numbers are just so high. There are just so many.”

But seeing children like Minhaj recover gives him the strength to go on.

Fighter jets and helicopters have been flying overhead since Kenyan forces moved en masse into Somalia on Sunday. The invasion came one day after Kenyan defense officials said the country has the right to defend itself against al-Shabab militants after a string of kidnappings inside Kenya. Four Europeans have been abducted and one killed.

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Witnesses in the Somali town of Dhobley on Monday said an estimated 40 Kenyan military vehicles entered the town on Sunday. Ali Abdullahi, a resident in Dhobley, said the army vehicles were towing what he described as “big guns.”

No large-scale fighting has yet broken out, the residents said.

Late Sunday evening, a military helicopter crashed and caught fire inside Kenya from an apparent mechanical malfunction, a diplomat and a resident said. No civilian casualties were reported but the status of the pilots on board was not immediately known.

Kenya’s government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said Kenyan troops “are pursuing al-Shabab across the border.” He did not give any other details.

In response, al-Shabab, Somalia’s most dangerous militant group, tried to raise the alarm in areas it controls. Residents in the town of Qoqani who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals said militants were going into homes and forcibly recruiting new fighters.

“Are you ready to live under Christians?” one al-Shabab official shouted on a militant radio station. “Get out of your homes and defend your dignity and religion. Today is the day to defend against the enemy.”

A Somali government spokesman, Abdirahman Omar Osman, said his government welcomes logistical support from “our Kenyan brothers,” but said Somalia did not need Kenyan troops.

“Our forces are ready to combat al-Shabab and they are doing so effectively. They are ready at the borders, so sending troops is not needed,” Osman said.

The helicopter crashed in Liboi, a town about 10 miles (20 kilometers) from the Kenya-Somalia border. The Liboi resident asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. The diplomat’s employer does not allow him to be identified.

Mutua and Kenya’s military spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kenyan troops have frequently crossed the border into Somalia, but Sunday’s push appears to be a bigger and more concerted effort. Minister of Internal Security George Saitoti told a news conference on Saturday that Kenyan forces would pursue al-Shabab into Somalia.

“For the first time our country is threatened with the most serious level of terrorism,” he said.

The public declaration to attack al-Shabab came two days after armed militants kidnapped two Spanish aid workers with the group Doctors Without Borders from the Dadaab refugee camp, a sprawling expanse of temporary homes where almost 500,000 Somalis live. The population of Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, has swelled by tens of thousands in recent months because of Somalia’s famine.

On Oct. 1, Somali gunmen took a wheelchair-bound Frenchwoman from her home near the resort town of Lamu. Somalis also abducted a British woman from a Kenyan coastal resort in September. Her husband was killed in the attack.

Kenya’s push north into Somalia will open another front that Somali militants must contend with. African Union forces from Uganda and Burundi have expanded their control of Mogadishu in recent months and have almost completely forced al-Shabab out of the capital.

The rapper, who left Somalia as a child more than two decades ago to settle in Canada, made a brief visit to Mogadishu on Sunday. He was mobbed by famine refugees who tried to shake his hand or hug him as he toured Mogadishu’s Banadir Hospital and met with malnourished children.

“I came to Somalia to see the situation here and give any donation I have to the people and anything else available,” he said, speaking in Somali. “I will do all I can to help my people in Somalia.”

He did not perform his hit song “Wavin’ Flag,” which tells of the difficulties he faced growing up in the lawless, impoverished Horn of Africa nation. A version of that song was used for a Coca-Cola Co. campaign when South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup.

The United Nations says more than 3.2 million Somalis need food aid. The U.S. says 29,000 Somali children under age 5 have died.

The U.N. says tens of thousands of people already have died in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti and has warned that the famine hasn’t peaked. More than 12 million people in the region need food aid, according to the U.N. Somalia has been hit hardest because of a confluence of conflict and climate change.

Decades of violence in Somalia has left population vulnerable to the vagaries of weather changes. Islamist insurgents are also attempting to overthrow Somalia’s weak U.N.-backed government. The most dangerous among the groups is the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militant group, which has barred aid agencies from operating in the territories it controls in southern Somalia.

The southern parts of Somalia, which are mainly under the control of al-Shabab extremists, have been worst affected because of the group’s refusal to allow in key humanitarian groups including the World Food Program, the world’s major aid provider.

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Witnesses accused government soldiers of starting the chaos by trying to steal some of the 290 tons of dry rations as the aid workers tried to hand them out in the biggest camp in Mogadishu for famine refugees. Then refugees joined in the scramble, prompting some soldiers to open fire, the witnesses said.

“It was carnage. They ruthlessly shot everyone,” said Abdi Awale Nor, who has been living at the camp. “Even dead bodies were left on the ground and other wounded bled to death.”

David Orr, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said the food distribution started smoothly at around 6 a.m. but degenerated a couple hours later.

“We got reports of trouble, looting. The trucks were overwhelmed by a mob of people. There were reports of some shots fired,” said Orr, who said he could not confirm any death tolls. He said he didn’t know specifically what type of food was being handed out by the WFP, a U.N. agency.

Another refugee, Muse Sheik Ali, said soldiers first tried to steal some of the food aid, and that other refugees began to take the food.

“Then soldiers opened fire at them, and seven people, including elderly people, were killed on the spot. Then soldiers took the food and people fled from the camp,” he said.

Thousands of Somali’s have flooded into Mogadishu from the drought-stricken south, walking much or all the way and seeing weakened loved ones perish from starvation or complications from malnutrition. The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates.

Somalia Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali visited the camp after the violence and said he was “deeply sorry.” Ali said an investigation would be opened and promised harsh punishment for anyone found guilty.

The already mostly lawless capital has been made even more chaotic with the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing drought in the south, the famine’s epicenter. International groups face huge challenges in distributing food inside Somalia. The worst-hit part of the country is a no-go area for most aid groups because it is controlled by al-Qaida-linked insurgents, who deny there is a famine and who have allowed only the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter.

More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food aid. The U.N. says 640,000 children are acutely malnourished in Somalia, where the U.N. has declared five famine zones, including the refugee camps of Mogadishu.

Witnesses said two World Food Program trucks were delivering aid when the chaos broke out. WFP often tries to do what it calls “wet feedings,” in Somalia – giving out already made food like porridge – to limit the chances that it will be looted. But in this case it was dry rations, Orr said.

Somali soldiers control just part of the capital and are poorly trained.

“They fired on us as if we were their enemy,” said famine refugee Abidyo Geddi. “When people started to take the food then the gunfire started and everyone was being shot. We cannot stay here much longer. We don’t get much food and the rare food they bring causes death and torture.”

Private militias – most of them politically connected – are competing to guard or steal food. At least four competing militias have the run of government-controlled areas of Mogadishu.

The gunmen roar around in pickup trucks and wage battle over the wages they hope to be paid to either guard the aid or for the cash it will bring when it is stolen and sold. The insecurity amid famine echoes the situation in 1992 that prompted deployment of a U.S.-led multinational force to safeguard the delivery of food to Somalia’s starving.

That international intervention collapsed in 1993 after two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and 18 servicemen were killed in the crashes and subsequent rescue attempt in the streets of Mogadishu.

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The United Nations has said previously that tens of thousands of people have died in the drought, the worst in Somalia in 60 years. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, a statistic that suggests the death toll of small children will rise.

Nancy Lindborg, an official with the U.S. government aid arm, told a congressional committee in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. estimates that more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia. That number is based on nutrition and mortality surveys verified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.N. on Wednesday declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones, bringing the total number to five. Out of a population of roughly 7.5 million, the U.N. says 3.2 million Somalis are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance.

Getting aid to Somalia has been made more difficult because al-Qaida-linked militants control much of the country’s most desperate areas. Al-Shabab has denied that a famine is taking place, and won’t give access to the World Food Program, the world’s biggest provider of food aid.

Tens of thousands of refugees have fled south-central Somalia in hopes of finding food at camps in Ethiopia, Kenya and in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

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At least six people died and 39 people were wounded, including 19 AU peacekeepers.

A medical official at Mogadishu airport said the AU peacekeepers were to be evacuated to Nairobi, the capital city of neighboring Kenya, to be treated of injuries they sustained in the fighting. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the press.

The al-Shabab militants already have killed men who tried to escape the famine with their families, saying it is better to starve than accept help from the West. The World Food Program says it cannot reach 2.2 million people in need of aid in the militant-controlled areas in southern Somalia because of insecurity.

Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the AU peacekeeping force in Somalia, said that AU forces had conducted a “short tactical offensive operation” Thursday in Mogadishu.

“This action will further increase security … and ensure that aid agencies can continue to operate to get vital supplies to internally displaced,” Ankunda said in a statement.

“We are concerned about the extremists’ reckless attacks given the humanitarian activities being carried out presently,” he said.

Ankunda said al-Shabab’s decision last week to rescind permission allowing aid groups to operate in the areas the militants control already has denied hundreds of thousands of Somalis access to food aid.

He said the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, will keep humanitarian organizations informed of their future operations to limit the impact on the relief efforts.

“AMISOM fully understands the need to restrain military operations while the aid agencies mount their humanitarian campaign. However, we are here to maintain stability in Mogadishu, and if we perceive a threat from the extremist insurgents, then it is our duty to protect and defend the most vulnerable from this threat,” he said.

The devastating famine in the Horn of Africa threatens al-Shabab’s hold on areas under its control, with the militants fearing that the disaster will drive away the people they tax and conscript into military service.

In the past, the militants have blocked aid workers from helping those in need in Somalia, fearing that foreign assistance would undermine their control.

A World Food Program plane with 10 tons of peanut-butter paste landed Wednesday in Mogadishu, the first of several planned airlifts in coming weeks.

That will help, but Lt. Col. Kuamurari Katwekyeire, the civil-military coordination chief for AMISOM, said the U.N. and other aid groups need to do more.

In a statement Thursday, the WFP said that it has a funding shortfall of $252 million for the famine relief efforts in the Horn of Africa. The agency said it was encouraged by the response of some donor countries that have pledged $250 million to help.

The drought has created a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet. The U.N. believes tens of thousands already have died in Somalia in areas held by al-Qaida-linked Islamist rebels.

WFP estimates more than 11.3 million people need aid across drought-hit regions in East Africa. The majority of those affected live in pastoral communities whose herds have been wiped out because of a lack of water.

But the famine has particularly ravaged Somalia because many aid groups were banned from militant-controlled areas in the south two years ago.

Somalia has been mired in conflict since 1991 when long time dictator Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords who then turned on each other. Islamist militants led by al-Shabab are attempting to overthrow the weak U.N.-backed government that is being propped up by about 9,000 AU peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi.

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Exhausted, rail-thin women are stumbling into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia with dead babies and bleeding feet, having left weaker family members behind along the way.

“Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years,” said Mark Bowden, the U.N.’s top official in charge of humanitarian aid in Somalia. “This desperate situation requires urgent action to save lives … it’s likely that conditions will deteriorate further in six months.”

The crisis is the worst since 1991-92, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death, Bowden said. That famine prompted intervention by an international peacekeeping force, but it eventually pulled out after two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in 1993.

Since then, Western nations have mainly sought to contain the threat of terrorism from Somalia — an anarchic nation where the weak government battles Islamic militants on land and pirates hijack ships for millions of dollars at sea.

Oxfam said $1 billion is needed for famine relief. On Wednesday, the U.S. announced an additional $28 million in emergency funding on top of the $431 million in assistance already given this year.

Most importantly, those new U.S. funds won’t be placed under restrictions implemented in 2009 that are designed to keep food and money from being stolen by Islamic militants.

Aid groups have called for the restrictions to be lifted entirely and say the rules have severely limited their operations. U.S. humanitarian contributions in Somalia fell from $237 million in 2008 to $29 million last year.

“We’ve seen a very large shortfall over the past few years given the political restrictions attached to humanitarian funding,” said Tanja Schumer of the Somalia NGO Consortium, which represents 78 aid agencies working on Somalia. “To get American money we have to vouch for all our contractors and all our local partners and that is tricky.”

Somalia is the most dangerous country in the world to work in, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program, which has lost 14 relief workers in the past few years. Kidnappings, killings and attacks on aid convoys occur frequently. Two years ago WFP pulled out of Islamist-controlled southern Somalia after the rebels demanded cash payments and other concessions.

U.S. military operations against terrorism suspects also have disrupted humanitarian operations, said Bowden. Insurgents vowed to target foreign aid workers after a U.S. missile strike killed the head of the Islamist al-Shabab militia and 24 other people in 2008. Aden Hashi Ayro was reputedly al-Qaida’s commander in Somalia and linked to a string of attacks on foreign aid workers and journalists.

But WFP head Josette Sheeran said the agency is willing to return to southern Somalia if the insurgents guarantee safe passage and free access to aid. Two regions of Somalia — Bakool and Lower Shabelle — are suffering from famine and eight more are at risk.

“We are absolutely fully committed to going where the hungry are,” she said.

The Horn of Africa is suffering a devastating drought compounded by war, neglect, poor land policies and spiraling prices. Some areas in the region have not had such a low rainfall in 60 years, aid group Oxfam said. Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have all been badly affected, and Eritrea is also believed to be suffering, although its repressive government does not release figures.

Yet only Somalia is technically suffering from famine, defined as when two adults or four children per 10,000 people die of hunger each day and a third of children are acutely malnourished.

In some areas of Somalia, six people are dying a day and more than half of children are acutely malnourished, Bowden said. Prices of staple foods have increased 270 percent over the last year, compounding the misery.

Somalia’s civil war is partly to blame, said Joakim Gundel, who heads Katuni Consult, a Nairobi-based company often asked to evaluate international aid efforts in Somalia.

He said aid groups found fundraising easier if they blamed natural disaster rather admitting the emergency was partly caused by a complex, 20-year civil war worsened by international apathy and incompetence.

“There is no clear cut answer,” he said. “People are suffering and there is a need to respond. But drought is not the only cause. Conflict is a key reason and it is not being addressed properly.”

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Doctors say the 25-year-old’s brother and sister were killed in front of him, and that he was abducted and tortured by gunmen. Soon after, Qasim began wandering the streets naked, lashing out at passers-by.

In this Horn of Africa nation that has been mired in anarchy and war for two decades, nearly all families have been touched by tragedy. The World Health Organization estimates that one in three Somalis have suffered from some kind of mental illness, a rate that is among the highest in the world.

Gunfire crackles every few seconds in Mogadishu at night, and mortars scream out of the sky.

“We believe every bullet or mortar will cause more people to become mentally ill,” said Dr. Abdirahman Ali Awale, a Somali psychiatrist.

Somalia’s civil war also has simultaneously destroyed health care infrastructure to treat the traumatized. A World Health Organization report found that the country has only three psychiatrists and no psychologists working at its five main mental health facilities.

As a result, some Somalis have been chained up in mental wards for as long as eight years, according to the WHO. At one mental health facility, almost 50 percent of patients were chained. At other clinics, doctors recite the Quran to patients, hoping it will improve their condition.

This year, WHO began giving medicine and other supplies to the Habeb mental hospital, the only facility that treats patients without detaining them.

“Our treatment is chain-free. We never restrain them,” said Dr. Abdirahman Habeb. He says the facility has treated more than 9,000 psychiatric patients using a combination of medicine and counseling. Still, the majority of mentally ill people in Somalia face much grimmer prospects.

The Somali government, which is consumed by political infighting and battling an al-Qaida-linked insurgency, is unable to even assert control over all of Mogadishu much less help its traumatized population. It relies on 9,000 African Union peacekeepers to retain control of half the country’s capital.

Dr. Rizwan Hamayun, who helped write a WHO study earlier this year examining mental health in Somalia, said the chaos has resulted in a loss of jobs, family, homes and property which in turns can contribute to mental illness. His latest new patient was a shepherd who attempted suicide after losing all his animals not to war but to a natural calamity – an ongoing drought.

While poverty and fear are the main triggers for mental illness, some also have been intimidated by continuous threats made by insurgents over mobile phones. Insurgents call and threaten people they suspect of collaborating with the government. As punishment for alleged crimes, insurgents saw off captives’ hands and feet in public squares and stone people to death.

The insurgents accused Ibrahim Nuraddin of selling phone credit, bread, and other small items to Somali soldiers. The elderly former shopkeeper had a mental breakdown after receiving frequent death threats, relative Ibrahim Farabadn said.

Nuraddin had already spent one year imprisoned in his family’s house or tied to a tree. Finally, relatives sought treatment after hearing that a Mogadishu clinic was taking patients. Three hefty men dragged Nuraddin into the clinic but he struggled to escape. They quickly chained him up.

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Meanwhile, the remains of the four were taken aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, as were 15 suspected pirates now facing charges in the deaths.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that the killings were “deplorable” and that they underscored the need for international cooperation on fighting the scourge of piracy in waters off the Horn of Africa.

It was the first time U.S. citizens have been killed in a wave of pirate attacks that have plagued the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean in recent years.

Clinton expressed her sympathies for the families of the victims killed aboard the pirated yacht Quest – Jean and Scott Adam, of Marina del Rey near Los Angeles, and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, of Seattle, Washington.

The Adamses lived aboard the Quest and had been sailing around the world since December 2004 distributing Bibles. The yacht was hijacked Friday several hundred miles south of Oman.

President Barack Obama was awakened to news of the deaths at 4:42 a.m. Washington time Tuesday. He had authorized the military on Saturday to use force in case of an imminent threat to the hostages, said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Marine Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement from Tampa, Fla.: “We express our deepest condolences for the innocent lives callously lost aboard the Quest.”

Clinton urged international partners to provide material, financial and logistical support to an African peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the country the pirates use as the launching point of their attacks. Reports indicated that the pirates had launched from the coastal town of Harardhere, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

U.S. naval forces were trailing the Americans’ captured yacht with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and four warships and negotiations were under way when pirates fired toward the ship with a rocket-propelled grenade, the military said. Then gunfire was heard aboard the yacht; and when special operations forces arrived on the vessel they found the Americans had been shot, the Central Command statement said.

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Resident Hussein Ali says he will no longer greet women he knows for fear of punishment.

Student Hamdi Osman says gunmen are searching buses for improperly dressed women or women traveling alone. She says she was once beaten for wearing Somali traditional dress instead of the long, shapeless black robes favored by the fighters.

The insurgents have already banned women from working in public, leaving many families completely destitute.

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KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — An al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group suspected in twin bombings in Uganda’s capital that killed 64 people watching the World Cup final endorsed the attacks on Monday but stopped short of claiming responsibility, as Uganda’s president vowed to hunt down those responsible.

The blasts came two days after a commander with the Somali group, al-Shabab, called for militants to attack sites in Uganda and Burundi, two nations that contribute troops to the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

The attacks also raise concerns about the capabilities of al-Shabab, which the U.S. State Department has declared a terrorist organization. If confirmed that the group carried out the attacks, it would be the first time al-Shabab has struck outside Somalia.

In Mogadishu, Somalia, Sheik Yusuf Sheik Issa, an al-Shabab commander, told The Associated Press early Monday that he was happy with the attacks in Uganda but refused to confirm or deny that al-Shabab was responsible.

“Uganda is one of our enemies. Whatever makes them cry, makes us happy. May Allah’s anger be upon those who are against us,” Sheik said.

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Kampala’s police chief, Kale Kaihura, said he believed al-Shabab could be responsible.

A California-based aid group, meanwhile, said one of its American workers was among the dead. Police said Ethiopian, Indian and Congolese nationals were also among those killed and wounded, police said.

Ugandan government spokesman Fred Opolot said Monday there were indications that two suicide bombers took part in the late Sunday attacks, which left nearly 60 others wounded.

Blood and pieces of flesh littered the floor among overturned chairs at the scenes of the blasts, which went off as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands. The attack on the rugby club, where crowds sat outside watching a large-screen TV, left 49 dead, police said. Fifteen others were killed in the restaurant explosion.

“We were enjoying ourselves when a very noisy blast took place,” said Andrew Oketa, one of the hospitalized survivors. “I fell down and became unconscious. When I regained, I realized that I was in a hospital bed with a deep wound on my head.”

Several Americans from a Pennsylvania church group were wounded in the restaurant attack including Kris Sledge, 18, of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. He said from a hospital bed afterward that he was “just glad to be alive.”

Florence Naiga, 32, a mother of three children, said her husband had gone to watch the World Cup final at the rugby club.

“He did not come back. I learnt about the bomb blasts in the morning. When I went to police they told me he was among the dead,” she said.

Invisible Children, a San Diego, California-based aid group that helps child soldiers, identified the dead American as one of its workers, Nate Henn, who was killed on the rugby field. Henn, 25, was a native of Wilmington, Delaware.

“From traveling the United States without pay advocating for the freedom of abducted child soldiers in Joseph Kony’s war, to raising thousands of dollars to put war-affected Ugandan students in school, Nate lived a life that demanded explanation. He sacrificed his comfort to live in the humble service of God and of a better world, and his is a life to be emulated,” the group said in a statement on its website.

Kony heads the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has waged one of Africa’s longest and most brutal rebellions, in northern Uganda.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni toured the blast sites Monday and said that the terrorists behind the bombings should fight soldiers, not “people who are just enjoying themselves.”

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“We shall go for them wherever they are coming from,” Museveni said. “We will look for them and get them as we always do.”

Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye said it was too early to speculate about any military response to the attacks.

Somalia’s president condemned the blasts and described the attack as “barbaric.”

Al-Shabab, which wants to overthrow Somalia’s weak, U.N.-backed government, is known to have links with al-Qaida. Al-Shabab also counts militant veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts among its ranks.

Al-Shabab’s fighters, including two recruited from the Somali communities in the United States, have carried out multiple suicide bombings in Somalia.

Uganda’s government spokesman said the first blast occurred at the Ethiopian Village restaurant at 10:55 p.m. Two more blasts happened at the rugby field 20 minutes later, he said.

Ethiopia, which fought two wars with Somalia, is a longtime enemy of al-Shabab and other Somali militants who accuse their neighbor of meddling in Somali affairs. Ethiopia had troops in Somalia between December 2006 to January 2009 to back Somalia’s fragile government against the Islamic insurgency. Ethiopia later withdrew its troops under an intricate peace deal mediated by the United Nations.

In addition to Uganda’s troops in Mogadishu, Uganda also hosts Somali soldiers trained in U.S. and European-backed programs.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the U.S. was prepared to provide any necessary assistance to the Ugandan government.

President Barack Obama was “deeply saddened by the loss of life resulting from these deplorable and cowardly attacks,” Vietor said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined Obama in offering condolences and added, “The United States stands with Uganda. We have a long-standing, close friendship with the people and government of Uganda and will work with them to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.”

Officials said the Sunday attacks will not affect the African Union summit being held in Uganda from July 19-27. Many African leaders are expected to attend.

“The summit will go on. The AU and African countries have the resolve to fight terrorism with the international community,” said Ramtane Lamamra, the AU’s peace and security commissioner.

RELATED: Bullet-Scarred Young Boy Becomes Lost Face Of Somalia’s War ]]> http://newsone.com/world/associated-press/somali-militants-praise-attacks-that-killed-64/feed/ 5 http://newsone.com/world/newsonestaff2/rare-haven-of-stability-in-somalia-seeks-independence/ http://newsone.com/world/newsonestaff2/rare-haven-of-stability-in-somalia-seeks-independence/#comments Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:30:00 +0000 NewsOne Staff http://newsone.com/?p=570345 From the NY Times: BURAO, Somalia — The rallies usually start early in the morning, before the sunshine hurts. By 8 a.m. on a recent day, thousands of people were packed into Burao’s sandy town square, with little boys climbing high into the trees to get a peek at the politicians. “We’re going to end corruption!” one of the politicians boomed, holding several microphones at once. �... Read more..]]>

From the NY Times:

BURAO, Somalia — The rallies usually start early in the morning, before the sunshine hurts.

By 8 a.m. on a recent day, thousands of people were packed into Burao’s sandy town square, with little boys climbing high into the trees to get a peek at the politicians.

“We’re going to end corruption!” one of the politicians boomed, holding several microphones at once. “We’re going to bring dignity back to the people!”

Check out our gallery of this week’s most important photos:

The boys cheered wildly. Wispy militiamen punched bony fists in the air. The politicians’ messages were hardly original. But in this corner of Africa, a free and open political rally — led, no less, by opposition leaders who could actually win — is an anomaly apparently worthy of celebration.

The crowd that day helped tell a strange truth: that one of the most democratic countries in the Horn of Africa is not really a country at all. It is Somaliland, the northwestern corner of Somalia, which, since the disintegration of the Somali state in 1991, has been on a quixotic mission for recognition as its own separate nation.

Click here to read more.

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Somali President Quits Amid International Pressure

Bullet-Scarred Young Boy Becomes Lost Face Of Somalia’s War

From HuffPost.com:

Gunmen believed to be from a radical Islamic group in northeast Mogadishu, Somalia, shot two people dead during an impromptu raid on a house where people were watching a World Cup match Saturday night, Reuters reports.

A witness told reporters that masked militants “stormed into the house” and open fired at the World Cup viewers, killing two instantly. The militants rounded up about 10 other fans, but left the bodies in the home, the witness said.

The incident came on the heels of a national ban on viewing “un-Islamic” World Cup games made by the local militia group al Shabaab, which controls much of south and central Somalia by force. By al Shabaab’s logic, the championship interferes with the group’s plan to overthrow the government, because Somali citizens are too preoccupied with the games to fight on their behalf.

Other militant groups have also professed their disapproval of the World Cup.

Click here to read more.

Click here to view photos.

RELATED STORIES:

World Cup In South Africa A Source Of Pride For Black Players

South Africa Braces For Spotlight Of World Cup

From Press TV:

The United States is involved in preparatory military operations in Somali for a ‘major’ offensive against Somali fighters, report says.

US is providing military assistance to Somali government in order to retake capital Mogadishu from Somali fighters, a recent report in The New York Times indicates.

The American military is conducting nighttime surveillance in the Al-Shabab-controlled areas of the capital and training Somali intelligence officers and forces in addition to providing logistical supports for the government, the report adds.

All the preliminary efforts, including reconnaissance and logistic operations, are meant to help launch a major assault on what US government dubs the ‘al-Qaeda’ branch in Somalia within ‘a few’ weeks.

Text continues after gallery …

“It’s the Americans … helping us,” the US newspaper quoted Somali military chief General Mohamed Gelle Kahiye as saying.

Click here to read more.

RELATED STORIES

Bullet-Scarred Young Boy Becomes Lost Face Of Somalia’s War

Somali Militant Groups Recruit American Men

From The Huffington Post

On Sunday, Islamic militants stoned a man to death for adultery in front of hundreds of local residents in Somalia. The man, named Mohamed Abukar Ibrahim, 48, was killed by members of the rebel group Hizbul Islam in Afgoye, 20 miles from the capital Mogadishu, according to the AFP. A second man, Ahmed Mohamoud Awale, 61, who was accused of murder, was shot to death. Hundreds of villagers were forced to watch the stoning by the militants, multiple reports said.

The girl with whom Ibrahim was accused of having an affair received 100 lashes; she escaped being put to death because she was not married at the time of the alleged sexual relations.

Click Here For More

RELATED STORIES

Bullet-Scarred Young Boy Becomes Lost Face Of Somalia’s War

REPORT: Inside Mogadishu, The City The World Forgot

NAIROBI, Kenya — The bullet hit mother and son as they walked through Somalia’s capital. She felt a sharp pain in her palm. Then she saw her 8-year-old: The bullet tore through his cheekbones, nose and mouth. Blood gushed down to his waist.

Two months later, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud’s nose is a small hole. His mouth is always open because he has no upper lip and his right eye is gone. He can barely speak.

His is a lost face of Somalia’s war.

RELATED: Somali Militant Groups Recruit American Men

Like so many other victims of a savage war, Ahmed was caught in the crossfire between Islamist insurgents and government forces, struck as he walked home from a Mogadishu market with his mother, who says a barrage of bullets poured out from the presidential palace.

Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, there are few images of the bloodshed in Somalia, where thousands of children have been casualties without the world knowing. Most foreign journalists stay away because of the danger.

On Sept. 24, an Associated Press photographer was present after Ahmed was shot and took pictures of the boy, bleeding profusely as he was carried from the scene by two bystanders. During the weeks that followed, AP journalists kept tabs on Ahmed and his mother, who are still struggling with his grievous wounds.

“My heart bleeds whenever I recall his former face, whenever I compare the two faces,” said Safi Mohamed Shidane as she inspected her son’s scars at a hospital in neighboring Kenya, where Ahmed was flown for treatment after a Minnesota-based Somali immigrant group intervened.

“God will judge those who did this to my son,” she said.

The lack of basic medical care, much less specialized doctors, has worsened the plight of children wounded in Somalia, a country mired in chaos since the last central government was ousted in 1991 and warlords turned their guns on each other.

“Ahmed’s situation represents the crisis faced by many, many children in Somalia,” said Katherine Grant, a child protection specialist with UNICEF who has visited the boy in the hospital outside Nairobi. Her agency will soon release a report accusing all parties in Somalia’s conflict of recruiting child soldiers.

There are no reliable casualty figures for children in Somalia, according to Grant and Susannah Friedman, emergencies director for Somalia for Save the Children U.K.

RELATED: Somali Pirates Hijack North Korean Chemical Tanker

“It is one of the most dangerous situations we’ve seen for children,” said Friedman, whose agency has aid workers in southern and central Somalia, but has pulled out of Mogadishu.

Yet even in violence-plagued Somalia, where the U.N. says one child in 10 dies before his or her first birthday and only 30 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, Ahmed’s suffering tugged at heartstrings.

Doctors at Mogadishu’s Medina Hospital did all they could: They inserted a tracheotomy tube for Ahmed to breath and a feeding tube for nourishment. Doctors stitched together the horrific wounds to his face and wrapped it in thick layers of gauze.

But medical supplies — and expertise — are scarce in Somalia. When heavy fighting hits the seaside capital, tents go up at Medina to accommodate all the casualties. Inside, bloody footprints track down long corridors echoing with screams.

Appeals went out for help for Ahmed, including on Somali Web sites.

In late October, a Somali immigrant aid group, Healing the Children of Minnesota, had the boy flown to Kenya, where there are specialists and more advanced equipment. The Nigerian physician treating him there, Dr. Igohwo Etu, said the boy will need surgeries costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to reconstruct his face.

The Rochester, Minn.-based aid group is now trying to arrange treatment for Ahmed overseas and has contacted hospitals in the U.S., Britain, Italy and Mexico, its associate director, Abia Ali, said Monday.

The group, which is funded mainly by contributions from Somali immigrants, has helped 56 Somali war victims, mostly children, obtain medical care, according to its executive director, Abdi Gaal. These included two children treated at the Mayo Clinic and one at Fairview University in Minneapolis, Ali said.

Despite his uncertain future, Ahmed is a cheerful little boy who likes to play with a toy helicopter and spends time reading the Quran while lying in his hospital bed, his left eye twinkling as he scans the pages.

At the urging of his mother, he uttered a few words during a recent AP interview: “hooyo” — or “mother” in Somali — and his name.

But at other times the boy’s spirits sink.

His mother consoled him and wiped away tears that streamed from the swollen spot where his right eye once was, even as another tear dropped from his good eye and rolled into the opening where his lips and nose once were.

“With the help of God, you will recover and go back to your school,” his mother murmured, stroking her son.

Doctors had planned to remove Ahmed’s feeding tube Monday, but delayed the procedure until Nov. 30. Shidane says she was told that American or Canadian doctors might operate on Ahmed after the new year, but isn’t sure about future plans for her son.

Tens of thousands of Somalis have fled the fighting in Mogadishu, where gun battles occur daily and the Islamist insurgents hold public amputations and executions within shooting distance of the headquarters of the embattled government.

“Right now it’s very hard to be optimistic that the situation will improve, let alone that the violence will end,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “In Mogadishu the situation is one of a bloody military stalemate. Neither side can gain the upper hand and the civilians are caught in between them.”

From FastCompany.com:

Apps, apps everywhere, but just how big is Apple’s app economy anyhow? Chances are, it’s bigger than you think. According to mobile ad startup AdMob, $200 million in apps are downloaded each month, making the App Store worth about $2.4 billion per year. To place that in context, that’s slightly less than the nominal gross domestic product of Somolia, and quite a bit more than the GDP of Central African Republic.

By comparison, Android is raking in about $5 million per month for a grand total of $60 million annually. One reason for the disparity between Apple’s app proliferation and Android’s lagging numbers stems from the fact that the iPhone represents 60% of U.S. smartphone usage.

But all the “iPhone v. Android” brouhaha has overshadowed one of the main catalysts behind the App Store’s success: the iPod Touch. Android and iPhone users download an average of 10 new apps per month, whereas iPod touch owners average 18 downloads. IPod Touch owners also download twice as many free apps as Android and iPhone users, and research has shown that users of free “lite” versions of apps are more likely to pay up for the complete versions.

To read more, click here.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Somali pirates holding a hijacked ship off the coast of Somalia fired at a U.S. Navy helicopter as it made a surveillance flight over the vessel, the first such attack by pirates on an American military aircraft, the Navy said Thursday.

The helicopter, which is based on the USS Chancellorsville, was not hit and there were no injuries, the Navy said.

The copter was flying on Wednesday over a Taiwanese-flagged fishing vessel, the Win Far, which pirates seized along with its 30-member crew in April and were holding south of the Somali port town of Hobyo.

The helicopter was about 3,000 yards away from the ship when the pirates opened fire with “a large caliber weapon,” the Navy said in a statement. The helicopter did not return fire, it said.

RELATED: Somali Pirates Vow Revenge On U.S.

Since seizing the Win Far in the Gulf of Aden, the pirates have used the vessel as a base for attacking other commercial ships, including the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama. Four pirates seized the Maersk Alabama in April, taking its captain Richard Phillips hostage. He was held for five days in a sweltering lifeboat off the coast until U.S. Navy snipers shot three of his captors dead.

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Bahrain-based spokesman for the Navy’s 5th Fleet told the Associated Press that Wednesday’s shooting marks the first time pirates shot at U.S. Navy helicopters conducting daily surveillance flights over areas where pirates anchor hijacked vessels and await ransom.

Christensen said four other merchant ships and 105 crewmembers are currently being held by pirates near the Win Far. They are anchored along Somalia’s coast, between port towns of Hobyo and Eyl, Christensen said in a phone interview on Thursday.

RELATED: Black Woman Commanded The Ship That Saved Captain From Somali Pirates

Piracy has increased in the Gulf of Aden — a crucial shipping route in and out of the Suez Canal — and elsewhere off the coast of Somalia, fueling a more than doubling of pirate attacks in the first half of 2009, according to an international maritime watchdog.

Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, and the country’s interim government is embroiled in a struggle with Islamist extremists with suspected al-Qaida links.

MINNEAPOLIS – One young man attended secret meetings in Minneapolis. Another got a phone call, urging him to leave Minnesota and go to Somalia to fight. Terrorist training videos featuring English speakers pepper YouTube, calling others to the cause.

Details are emerging about how terrorists in Somalia have lured young American men — including as many as 20 from Minnesota — back to their homeland to join their jihad. At least three have died, including one who authorities believe is the first American suicide bomber. Three others have pleaded guilty in the U.S. to terror-related charges.

Court proceedings and interviews with community members, attorneys and terror experts indicate the Somali-based terror group, al-Shabab, uses widespread recruitment tactics including a vast Web-based network.

“Al-Shabab 10 years ago would be a two-bit, paramilitary group that no one would’ve cared about … sitting in a basement somewhere stockpiling rocket-propelled grenades and bullets for AK-47s,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist at Georgetown University. “Now, we see them reaching into the United States.”

‘Most explicit’ propaganda
Like many terror groups, al-Shabab uses Internet videos to draw disenfranchised young men into its fold. Many feature typical militant scenes: men with covered faces firing automatic weapons, marching or practicing martial arts. Some show close-up footage of dead bodies and religious documents.

But al-Shabab’s propaganda sets it apart.

“I would say they were among the most explicit, the most violent, and the most enthusiastic videos of any jihadi organization out there,” said Evan Kohlmann, a terror consultant.

The group, which the U.S. government says has ties to al-Qaida, also uniquely targets Americans and English speakers, Kohlmann said.

Some videos show English-speaking suicide bombers reciting last wills. Others showcase a man with shoulder-length brown hair who calls himself Abu Mansour the American commanding fighters and glorifying jihadists killed in Somalia.

Al-Shabab’s online propaganda proliferated in recent years after messages from Osama bin Laden appeared on jihadist forums encouraging followers to go to Somalia. The country of 7 million has not had a functioning government since 1991.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington was concerned al-Shabab uses foreign fighters and there was no doubt the group wants to take control of Somalia and “launch attacks against countries far and near.”

Cultural awareness
Experts say Western recruits’ passports and cultural awareness make them valuable.

“You can’t take someone from the slums of Mogadishu and take them on some suicide mission to Rome, Paris, New York,” Hoffman said. American deaths also bring more attention to al-Shabab’s cause, he said.

In Minneapolis, home to the largest population of Somali immigrants in the U.S., a federal investigation into the missing men is illuminating the recruiting.

Salah Osman Ahmed, 26, of New Brighton, told a judge last month that he attended “secret meetings” in Minneapolis starting in October 2007. There, he said, a group of “guys” talked about returning to Somalia to fight Ethiopians. At the time, the Ethiopian army, which many Somalis viewed as abusive, occupied parts of Somalia.

When Ahmed got to Somalia, his attorney said, he realized what al-Shabab really was.

Hoffman said the underground meetings fit a pattern.

“The conspiratorial air is part of this group bonding,” Hoffman said. “That kind of atmosphere makes these young men think that what they are doing is all the more important.”

Hoffman also said terror groups use a network of friends, many of whom act like persuasive salesmen, to help recruit.

One man who filled that role in Minneapolis, by one account, was Zakaria Maruf.

Stephen Smith, an attorney who represents several young Somalis questioned by authorities, said his clients describe Maruf as someone with a bravado that appealed to younger men he met on the basketball court or at mosques.

Smith said one of his 18-year-old clients got a phone call from Maruf, in Somalia, asking him to join the fight. Maruf and the teenager also exchanged e-mails and had a brief conversation in a chat room, Smith said.

Smith said the teen didn’t go but felt uncomfortable turning down someone he looked up to.

Maruf’s whereabouts aren’t known. Some family members say they believe he was killed in Somalia last month, but federal officials could not confirm that.

Facebook link?
Many young Somalis in Minneapolis say friends who left have stayed in touch through Facebook or phone calls. In those conversations, friends said, the men talked about life in Somalia being harder than expected, and of missing American food and Starbucks.

The Facebook accounts are private. While the FBI said it can’t comment on specific communications, spokesman E.K. Wilson said the agency continues to investigate “who or what motivated” the young men to go to Somalia.

In Minnesota, imams are trying to counter al-Shabab’s message by speaking out against violence and radicalism, reminding the faithful that Islam is peaceful.

Farhan Hurre, the executive director of Minneapolis’ Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, which has rejected suspicions it played a part in recruiting, said mosque leaders also are advising parents to keep their eyes open.

“If you have computers, if you have Internet, you have to know the sites that your boys are visiting and what they are listening to,” Hurre said.

Burhan Hassan was an infant when he left his homeland of Somalia. He grew up American, a bright student with dreams of becoming a doctor or lawyer. But now his family is trying to find out why the 17-year-old was killed under mysterious circumstances in Somalia.

Hassan was one of about a dozen young Somali men who have gone missing from the Minneapolis area over the last couple years — recruited, their families say, by radical elements in Somalia. Relatives said they learned Friday that he had been killed and buried in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, but they had few details.

His death follows a suicide bombing carried out in that warring Horn of Africa country last October by another young Somali man fromMinneapolis.

“We believe he was killed because he would have been a key person in the investigation into the recruitment (of young Somali men) here in Minneapolis,” said Hassan’s uncle, Abdirizak Bihi. Bihi said his nephew was found shot in the head in an open area of the city.

Hassan‘s mother declined to comment Monday. But Bihi, her brother, said she’s “devastated, the whole family’s devastated.”

“We had a young kid, we put all the efforts in our life to bring him here,” Bihi told The Associated Press.

FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson said he could not confirm whether Hassan had been killed. A State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore, had no firm information either.

The FBI has acknowledged an ongoing investigation into the disappearances, but won’t elaborate. Several local Somalis say they’ve been questioned by the FBI, Customs officials, or subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury over the last several months.

Hassan — who was raised by a single mother after his father died in an accident — was 8 months old when his family arrived at a refugee camp in Kenya. With two older brothers and a sister, he was not yet 4 when they came to the United States in 1996.

Hassan was a student at Roosevelt High School and was taking college courses such as calculus and advanced chemistry through the University of Minnesota, with dreams of attending Harvard University to study medicine or law.

“He never knew anything about Somalia. He grew up here. He was an American kid,” Bihi said. He said his nephew did not even speak the Somali language.

But last November, Hassan disappeared at the age of 17. His mother reported him missing to police. Relatives said they feared he was recruited by al-Shabab, an extremist Islamist group considered by the U.S. State Department to be a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab denies the links.

Last October, a Minneapolis man, Shirwa Ahmed, carried out a suicide bombing as part of a series of coordinated attacks that targeted a U.N. compound, the Ethiopian consulate and the presidential palace in Hargeisa, capital of the Somaliland region. FBI Director Robert Mueller said in February that the bomber had probably been “radicalized” in the Twin Cities.

Bihi, Hassan’s uncle, has said that Hassan called home from time to time but the calls were short and cryptic. When family members asked Hassan what he was doing, the teen quickly ended the phone conversation.

Bihi said the teenager, who was in poor physical shape, had been sick — possibly with malaria — and that his family had been working to try to bring Hassan to the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. Bihi said the family suspected that Hassan was killed by members of al-Shabab.

Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said there is a concern Hassan was killed because of plans to return to the U.S., and he noted others are still unaccounted for.

“Someone ought to be held accountable for this,” Jamal said.

Like some of the other missing young people, Hassan had also attended the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in Minneapolis. Hassan had gone to the mosque for more than 10 years and was involved in a youth group there, another uncle told a U.S. Senate committee in March.

Officials of the mosque — the largest in Minnesota — have repeatedly denied accusations by families of some of the missing men that the mosque played a role in their decision to leave. The center’s director, Omar Hurre, repeated on Monday that such allegations are “baseless.”

Hassan‘s relatives have said his disappearance came as a shock when the family discovered him missing Nov. 4, 2008.

In testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, another uncle, Osman Ahmed, said they first became suspicious when they got a message from Roosevelt High School saying Hassan had missed all his classes that day. He said the youth’s mother checked his room and found that his luggage, clothes and passport were missing.

Ahmed testified that all of the missing Somali-American youths he knew of who disappeared were not troubled kids or involved with gangs. On the contrary, he said, they embodied the hopes of their community.

“They were the doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and leaders of the future of our strong and prosperous nation,” he said.

From TheGuardian:

Mogadishu’s best barometer of ­violence is the little blackboard on which Dr Taher Mahmoud daily records the number of patients in his hospital. For the last 20 years the tall surgeon with huge hands has been operating on the victims of the city’s civil war.

“It’s good times now,” he told me when we met a few weeks ago. “We are only getting four to six gunshot casualties a day. That’s very good.” He pointed at the blackboard covered with his neat white handwriting: it recorded that 86 patients were undergoing treatment. “During the Ethiopian war [2007-08] we had 300 in this hospital.”

Click here for more.

From PressHerald.com:

Five men have filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against PharMerica, one of the nation’s largest pharmacy services corporations.

Four of the plaintiffs are originally from Somalia, and the other is from Ethiopia. According to the suit filed Wednesday at U.S. District Court, the men were hired in early 2007 as pharmacy technicians at PharMerica’s facility in Portland.

The men claim that over the next six months, they suffered persistent harassment and discrimination by white co-workers and supervisors, creating a segregated workplace where their rights were routinely ignored.

After reporting their concerns about the alleged hostile environment, the men claim to have been subjected to retaliation by PharMerica managers. The plaintiffs say that on July 30, 2007, they were all fired.

Click here for the full report.

For those not familiar with K’Naan, he is a rapper from Somalia based in Canada. Here is a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post on Pirates in Somalia.

Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates
by K’naan

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery?

Well, in Somalia, the answer is: it’s complicated.

The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast with such
lop-sided journalism, that it’s lucky they’re not on a ship themselves. It’s true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective.

But according to so many Somalis, the disruption of Europe’s darling of a trade route, is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don’t believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And although its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.

After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some-odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels, were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It’s as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe.

A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It’s because of this disagreement that we’ve seen one of the most decomposing wars in Somalia’s history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.

But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore, a good clan -based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid’s men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and re-selling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard.

Read the Whole Story

Watch K’Naan Talk to Davey D. About Pirates

Part 2

A Mogadishu airport staff member says mortar shells were fired toward the airport as a plane carrying a U.S. congressman took off safely from the Somali capital.

An airport staff member reached by telephone at the control tower says the plane carrying New Jersey Democrat Donald Payne took off safely Monday. He says none of the six mortar shells fired landed in the airport. The airport staffer refused to give his full name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Payne met with Somalia’s president and prime minister during his one-day visit to Mogadishu on Monday. They discussed piracy, security and cooperation between Somalia and the United States. Payne is chairman of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa.

The American captain held hostage by four Somali pirates made a desperate escape attempt Friday but was recaptured, and officials said other pirates sought to reinforce their colleagues by sailing hijacked ships with other captives aboard to the scene of the standoff.

The U.S. also was bolstering its force by dispatching other warships to the site off the Horn of Africa, where a U.S. destroyer shadowed the drifting lifeboat carrying the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips.

The pirates on the lifeboat apparently fear being shot or arrested if they hand over Phillips — who was taken hostage in their failed effort to hijack the cargo ship Maersk Alabama on Wednesday — and they hope to link up with their colleagues who are using Russian, German, Filipino and other hostages captured in recent days as human shields.

Around midnight local time, Phillips jumped off the lifeboat and began swimming, but was recaptured by the pirates, according to Defense Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about unfolding operations.

Sailors on the USS Bainbridge, which is patrolling nearby, were able to see Phillips moving around and talking after his return to the lifeboat, and the Defense Department officials think he is unharmed.

Negotiations are taking place between the pirates and the captain of the Bainbridge, who is getting direction from FBI hostage negotiators, the officials said. The captors are also communicating with other pirate vessels by satellite phone, officials said.

U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus said U.S. warships also are headed to the area, more than 300 miles off Somalia’s Indian Ocean coast.

“We want to ensure that we have all the capability that might be needed over the course of the coming days,” he said.

Mohamed Samaw, a resident of the pirate stronghold in Eyl, Somalia, who claims to have a “share” in a British-owned ship hijacked Monday, said four foreign vessels held by pirates are heading toward the lifeboat. A total of 54 hostages are on two of the ships — citizens of China, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines, Tuvalu, Indonesia and Taiwan.

“The pirates have summoned assistance — skiffs and mother ships are heading towards the area from the coast,” said a Nairobi-based diplomat, who spoke on condition on anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media. “We knew they were gathering yesterday.”

Samaw said two ships left Eyl on Wednesday. A third sailed from Haradhere, another pirate base in Somalia, and the fourth was a Taiwanese fishing vessel seized Monday that was already only 30 miles from the lifeboat.

He said the ships include the German cargo ship Hansa Stavanger, seized earlier this month. The ship’s crew of 24 is made up of five Germans, three Russians, two Ukrainians, two Filipinos and 12 from Tuvalu.

Another man identified as a pirate by three different residents of Haradhere also said the captured German ship had been sent.

“They had asked us for reinforcement, and we have already sent a good number of well-equipped colleagues, who were holding a German cargo ship,” said the man, who asked that only his first name, Badow, be used to protect him from reprisals.

“We are not intending to harm the captain, so that we hope our colleagues would not be harmed as long as they hold him,” Badow said. “All we need, first, is a safe route to escape with the captain, and then (negotiate) ransom later.”

Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent whose Virginia-based firm Clayton Consultants Inc. handles hostage negotiations, told The Associated Press that the presence of other hijacked vessels in the area “could complicate the negotiation strategy under way.”

Negotiators are sure that various pirate groups are in contact, he said.

“We know for certain that they share information. We know they talk to each other. They’re not stupid. They can be very smart,” Cloonan said.

Phillips, 53, thwarted the takeover of the 17,000-ton U.S.-flagged Alabama by telling his crew of about 20 to lock themselves in a room, the crew told stateside relatives.

The crew later overpowered some of the pirates but Phillips surrendered himself to the bandits to safeguard his men, and the Somalis fled with him to an enclosed lifeboat, the relatives said.

At Phillips’ home in Underhill, Vt., family members nervously awaited word on his fate. Sister-in-law Lea Coggio said Thursday a representative of Maersk called to let Phillips’ wife know that food and water had been delivered to the lifeboat.

“I think he’s coping, knowing Richard,” she said. “He’s a smart guy, and he’s in control. ”

Officials at Maersk Line Ltd. offices in Norfolk, Va., did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment Friday.

The Alabama sailed away from the lifeboat Thursday, Maersk shipping line said, and a team of armed Navy SEALs is on board, according to a U.S. official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.

It was sailing toward the Kenyan port of Mombasa — its original destination — and was expected to arrive Saturday night, said Joseph Murphy, a professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy whose son, Shane Murphy, is second-in-command of the vessel.

Company spokesman Kevin Speers told AP Radio on Thursday the lifeboat carrying Phillips and the pirates was out of fuel and “dead in the water.”

Most of the lifeboats are about 28 feet long and carry water and food for 34 people for 10 days, Joseph Murphy said.

The lifeboats are covered and Murphy, speaking after a briefing by the shipping company, said he suspects the pirates have closed the ports to avoid sniper fire.

Petraeus said the other warships would arrive shortly. U.S. officials said the guided-missile frigate USS Halyburton was among them.

The show of force follows an increase in the number of attacks and the first on a U.S.-flagged ship. The vessels strengthen surveillance of the area and may dissuade pirates from seizing another ship, but there are not enough for a blockade in the danger zone that sprawls across 1.1 million square miles, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss operational matters.

The Alabama was the sixth vessel in a week to be hit by pirates who have extorted tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.

President Barack Obama is getting regular updates on the situation, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States will take whatever steps are needed to protect U.S. shipping interests against pirates.

Steve Romano, a retired head of the FBI hostage negotiation team, said he doesn’t recall the FBI ever negotiating with pirates before, but he said this situation is similar to other standoffs. Although pirates release most of their hostages unharmed, the difficulty will be negotiating with people who clearly have no way out, he said.

“There’s always a potential for tragedy here, and when people feel their options are limited, they sometimes react in more unpredictable and violent ways,” Romano said.

Osama bin Laden urged Somalis on Thursday to overthrow their new president, issuing a statement that clearly outlines al-Qaida’s ambitions in a nation long feared to be a haven for the terrorist network.

Bin Laden’s 11 1/2-minute audiotape was entirely focused on Somalia, an impoverished country in the Horn of Africa that has been in chaos for nearly two decades, torn apart by warlords and Islamic militant groups. In January, parliament elected President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, in hopes that he would unify the country’s factions.

Bin Laden Urges Jihad on Israel

“I think people who were skeptical that al-Qaida has ambition in Somalia will now have to think twice,” Rashid Abdi, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank in Nairobi told The Associated Press.

U.S. counterterrorism officials have warned of al-Qaida’s growing ties with the powerful al-Shabab group, which frequently battles government troops and militia allies and attacks African Union peacekeepers in the country. Last year, the U.S. State Department added al-Shabab, which means “the Youth,” to its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

“These are people who believe in the idea of permanent jihad and permanent war with the West,” Abdi said of al-Shabab. “Any engagement with the West is tantamount to renunciation of the faith.”

Ahmed’s election as president has been welcomed by the United Nations and Washington. His predecessor, Abdullahi Yusuf, resigned in December over his failure to stop the Islamic insurgency, and he went into exile.

In the audiotape, bin Laden told Somalia’s militants that “you are the first line of defense for the Islamic world in its southwestern part; and your patience and resolve supports your brothers in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Islamic Maghreb, Pakistan and the rest of the fields of Jihad.”

Somali President Quits Due to International Pressure

For years, Islamic militant groups have battled Somalia’s feeble U.N.-backed central government, which controls only a small part of the seaside capital, Mogadishu. All public institutions have crumbled and the once-beautiful city is now a gun-blasted shantytown. The lawlessness gripping the nation of 9.5 million people also has allowed piracy to flourish offshore in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Ahmed is a moderate from the Islamic opposition and has succeeded in drawing several other groups out of the insurgency. The aim is to isolate hard-line militants, particularly al-Shabab, which controls much of the country and has been blamed for imposing a harsh brand of Islam on the regions it controls. Rights groups say a 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death last year after Islamic militants accused her of adultery.

In the audiotape, bin Laden lashed out at Ahmed as a turncoat and tool of the United States, saying his election was “induced by the American envoy in Kenya,” a reference to the U.S. ambassador in Nairobi.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger had no immediate comment on the audiotape, which was the third from bin Laden this year. The last one was released on March 14.

Ahmed “turned … to partner up with the infidel” in a national unity government, bin Laden said. He accused Ahmed of abandoning his religion by entering the government.

Ahmed “must be dethroned and fought,” bin Laden said, adding that militants are obliged to “continue fighting the apostate government.”

Spokesmen for Ahmed and other Somali government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The recording, titled “Fight on, Champions of Somalia,” was posted on an Islamic militant Web forum where al-Qaida often releases messages from bin Laden and other top leaders.

Ahmed emerges from a coalition of Islamic militants known as the Council of Islamic Courts, which brought a semblance of peace to Somalia for six months in 2006. But two years ago, troops from U.S. ally Ethiopia invaded Somalia and removed the union because of feared links to al-Qaida. Militants launched a bloody insurgency against the Ethiopians and their ally, the weak U.N.-backed central government.

Ethiopian troops withdrew in January as part of an elaborate U.N.-brokered deal to bring onboard Islamic moderates and dissident lawmakers.

Somalia is nearly 100 percent Muslim, but most of its people are moderates and chafe against rules prohibiting music, sports and even chewing qat, a narcotic leaf popular in the country.

Mogadishu resident Abdulqafar Ismail Ali said bin Laden should withdraw his call for more fighting.

“Osama should not lecture us on Islam. We are Muslims,” said Ali, 28. “We are tired of wars and hostility in Somalia. It is not the time to topple the government.”

Within hours of Abdullahi Yusuf‘s resignation, mortars shells slammed into the pockmarked streets near the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu, where the government maintains only a token presence.

“Most of the country is not in our hands,” Yusuf said in a speech before parliament in Baidoa — one of the only towns controlled by Somalia’s government, which has been sidelined by Islamic insurgents with alleged ties to al-Qaida.

In the address broadcast nationwide on the radio, Yusuf said he could not unite Somalia’s bickering leadership and that the country was “paralyzed.”

“After seeing all these things, I have finally quit,” said Yusuf, who was president for four years. Meanwhile, troops from neighboring Ethiopia are scheduled to pull out this week, leaving a massive power vaccum after two years of propping up the weak Somali government.

The parliament speaker will stand as acting president until parliament elects a new leader within 30 days. There have been no announcements of who might be under consideration, but many believe Yusuf’s absence will allow moderate Islamist leaders into the government, which Yusuf had largely rejected.

Yusuf is the latest leader to have failed to pacify Somalia during two decades of turmoil. The Horn of African country has been beset by anarchy, violence and an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives.

There have been more than a dozen attempts to form an effective government since 1991. Meanwhile, all public institutions have crumbled and the once-beautiful seaside capital is now a gun-blasted shantytown.

The most aggressive Islamic insurgency group, al-Shabab, has made dramatic territory gains in recent months, and insurgents now control most of the country. In a statement Monday, al-Shabab said Yusuf was resigning “with shame.” The statement said it was too early to tell if Yusuf’s replacement would be an improvement.

The United States accuses al-Shabab of harboring the al-Qaida-linked terrorists who blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Many of the insurgency’s senior figures are Islamic radicals; some are on the State Department’s list of wanted terrorists.

The U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, who has been trying to salvage an ineffective peace deal in the country, lauded Yusuf’s resignation and said “a new page of Somalia history is now open.”

The United Nations has brokered peace deals between the government and an opposition faction, but they have failed to quell the political and violent chaos. Al-Shabab has refused to participate in the talks.

Yusuf, who like many of Somalia’s leaders is a former warlord, has been accused of being an obstacle to peace. Earlier this month, he tried to fire his prime minister, but was rebuffed by parliament. Neighboring countries, including Kenya, have threatened to impose sanctions on Yusuf and his family.

“I am happy that the Somali president has resigned,” Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said. “I wish him to become Somali elder and play a role in the common endeavor to restore peace and order in Somalia.”

Thousands of civilians have been killed or maimed by mortar shells, machine-gun crossfire and grenades in near-daily fighting in this arid country. The U.N. says Somalia has 300,000 acutely malnourished children, but attacks and kidnappings of aid workers have shut down many humanitarian projects.

The lawlessness also has allowed piracy to flourish off the coast.

Rights groups have accused all sides in the conflict — Islamic insurgents, the government and Ethiopian troops — of committing war crimes and other serious abuses for indiscriminately firing on civilian neighborhoods.

Ethiopia‘s planned withdrawal of troops would end their unpopular presence and leave the administration more vulnerable to insurgents. The Ethiopians entered Somalia two years ago with the tacit approval of the United States to drive out an earlier group of Islamic insurgents.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on one another. The current transitional government was formed with U.N. help in 2004.

Yusuf, a former Somali army colonel in the 1960s, was jailed by Barre when he refused to cooperate in a coup d’etat in 1969. Although Yusuf is a member of one of Somalia’s four biggest clans, the Darod, he was unpopular in Mogadishu because of his ties to Ethiopia — one of Somalia’s traditional enemies.

Somalia’s increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women — even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages.

And in an impoverished country where every public institution has crumbled, they have become heroes in the steamy coastal dens they operate from because they are the only real business in town.

“The pirates depend on us, and we benefit from them,” said Sahra Sheik Dahir, a shop owner in Harardhere, the nearest village to where a hijacked Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude was anchored Wednesday.

These boomtowns are all the more shocking in light of Somalia’s violence and poverty: Radical Islamists control most of the country’s south, meting out lashings and stonings for accused criminals. There has been no effective central government in nearly 20 years, plunging this arid African country into chaos.

Life expectancy is just 46 years; a quarter of children die before they reach 5.

But in northern coastal towns like Harardhere, Eyl and Bossaso, the pirate economy is thriving thanks to the money pouring in from pirate ransoms that have reached $30 million this year alone.

“There are more shops and business is booming because of the piracy,” said Sugule Dahir, who runs a clothing shop in Eyl. “Internet cafes and telephone shops have opened, and people are just happier than before.”

In Harardhere, residents came out in droves to celebrate as the looming oil ship came into focus this week off the country’s lawless coast.

Businessmen gathered cigarettes, food and cold bottles of orange soda, setting up kiosks for the pirates who come to shore to resupply almost daily.

Dahir said she even started a layaway plan for them.

“They always take things without paying and we put them into the book of debts,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Later, when they get the ransom money, they pay us a lot.”

Residents make sure the pirates are well-stocked in khat, a popular narcotic leaf, and aren’t afraid to gouge a bit when it comes to the pirates’ deep pockets.

“I can buy a packet of cigarettes for about $1 but I will charge the pirate $1.30,” said Abdulqadir Omar, an Eyl resident.

While pirate villages used to have houses made of corrugated iron sheets, now, there are stately looking homes made of sturdy, white stones.

“Regardless of how the money is coming in, legally or illegally, I can say it has started a life in our town,” said Shamso Moalim, a 36-year-old mother of five in Harardhere.

“Our children are not worrying about food now, and they go to Islamic schools in the morning and play soccer in the afternoon. They are happy.”

The attackers generally treat their hostages well in anticipation of a big payday, hiring caterers on shore to cook spaghetti, grilled fish and roasted meat that will appeal to Western palates.

And when the payday comes, the money sometimes literally falls from the sky.

Pirates say the ransom arrives in burlap sacks, sometimes dropped from buzzing helicopters, or in waterproof suitcases loaded onto skiffs in the roiling, shark-infested sea.

“The oldest man on the ship always takes the responsibility of collecting the money, because we see it as very risky, and he gets some extra payment for his service later,” Aden Yusuf, a pirate in Eyl, told AP over VHF radio.

The pirates use money-counting machines — the same technology seen at foreign exchange bureaus worldwide — to ensure the cash is real. All payments are done in cash because Somalia has no functioning banking system.

“Getting this equipment is easy for us, we have business connections with people in Dubai, Nairobi, Djibouti and other areas,” Yusuf said. “So we send them money and they send us what we want.”

Despite a beefed-up international presence, the pirates continue to seize ships, moving further out to sea and demanding ever-larger ransoms. The pirates operate mostly from the semiautonomous Puntland region, where local lawmakers have been accused of helping them and taking a cut of the ransoms.

For the most part, however, the regional officials say they have no power to stop piracy.

Meanwhile, towns that once were eroded by years of poverty and chaos are now bustling with restaurants, Land Cruisers and Internet cafes. Residents also use their gains to buy generators — allowing full days of electricity, once an unimaginable luxury in Somalia.

There are no reliable estimates of the number of pirates operating in Somalia, but they number in the thousands. And though the bandits do sometimes get nabbed, piracy is generally considered a sure bet to a better life.

NATO and the U.S. Navy say they can’t be everywhere, and American officials are urging ships to hire private security. Warships patrolling off Somalia have succeeded in stopping some pirate attacks. But military assaults to wrest back a ship are highly risky and, up to now, uncommon.

From CNN.com:

Pirates are believed to have anchored a hijacked supertanker carrying up to $100 million worth of crude oil off Somalia Tuesday, its operator has said, as more ships in the region have been boarded and taken over.

The 25-man crew of the tanker Sirius Star — including British, Croatian, Polish, Filipino and Saudi nationals — are reported to be safe, according to Dubai-based Vela International Marine.

“Our first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew,” said Vela President Salah Kaaki. “We are in communication with their families and are working toward their safe and speedy return.”

Click here for the full report.