My experience at the deadly Hotel Shamo bombing

Mohamed Olad Hassan, (look the Photo) a reporter for the BBC and The Associated Press, and chairman of the Somali Foreign Correspondents Association, recounts his experience covering a deadly ceremony in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Olad narrowly escaped death after a suicide bomber killed at least 23 people on December 3 at the graduation ceremony at Hotel Shamo. Three journalists were killed in the attack...
It was a Thursday morning, December 3. As usual, I got ready for my work as a journalist. I had an invitation that was given to me by Mohamed Zobe, one of the organizers of what was supposed to be a joyful graduation ceremony.
I and my colleague Ayaanle Husein Abdi, a reporter for the BBC Somali service, drove from my office toward the hotel, which is about 550 yards (500 meters) from my office. We were welcomed by jubilant students, whom we knew by face at the main gate of Hotel Shamo, where their Benadir University graduation ceremony was due to start.
There were dozens of armed body guards outside the hotel; they were apparently accompanying government ministers invited to the ceremony. Nobody checked us. There were only two men sitting in front of the hotel’s meeting hall. They looked at our invitation and allowed us to pass. Everyone assumed this would be a peaceful ceremony.
We sat in two empty seats in the second row of seats where ministers, doctors, and other dignitaries were sitting. There were hundreds of people in the meeting hall. The students were all dressed in colorful uniforms for their graduation. The hall had been brightly decorated, and there was a feeling of excitement—such ceremonies rarely happen in Mogadishu. With the conflict raging throughout the capital, the chance to attain academic credentials are limited. This ceremony, perhaps, symbolized a trace of hope: People’s lives could continue despite the shelling.
Proud parents beamed at their graduating loved ones, who were also sitting in the hall. Journalists, particularly the cameramen, were right in the front for a good view. People were making speeches, and we were taking notes, as usual.
Then all this brightness turned to darkness.
All I remember is being covered in dust. Some debris apparently from the roof of the hall hit me and there was no light anywhere. I looked across and the young guy sitting next to me was dead. The seat he had been sitting on was mine. We had changed positions for one moment, when I had left momentarily to move my recorder nearer to the speakers. That’s when the explosion occurred. It was my luck not to be sitting in that chair.

I recalled later that the dead man was a journalist, Mohamed Amin, at right, a reporter for Radio Shabelle, a local FM Station in Mogadishu. I had to jump over him to get out. I tried to get over the table where the ministers had been sitting. There were dead bodies right in front of my eyes. I had to step over their bodies too.
People were screaming the same question over and over: "Is it a bomb? Is it a bomb?" I went through the door that the ministers had come through when they entered the hall and I hid in a small room. It was a very dirty, unused toilet but already three other people, including a Reuters reporter, Abdi Guled, were there with me.

The survivors who could move immediately ran out of the hall because people thought a mortar had hit and that there could be another one. We had no idea what had happened. But I didn’t hear any more explosions and I had to go back into the hall to get out.
It was a shocking, terrible scene. There was blood splattered everywhere. I was really in disbelief, in shock. I have never seen so many people killed at the same time. All these bodies were there, right in front of my eyes, including two journalists.
I looked at the roof to see if there had been some kind of rocket attack but the roof was intact. So I knew something had exploded in the hall—either a suicide attack or a bomb or a mine. I went outside and the street was filled with people trying to rescue their friends and family.
No one knew who had been killed and who had survived.
I could see my colleagues—journalists I had been talking to just moments before—lying on the ground covered in blood. Hassan Zubeyr, at left, a cameraman for the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV and Abdulkhafar Abdulkadir, a freelance photographer who had only arrived five minutes before the explosion, were lying on their stomachs in a pool of blood. Abdulkadir died of his injuries in the afternoon.
One other colleague, Omar Faruq, a Reuters photographer, was right in front of me on his stomach. I couldn't tell whether he was alive or dead, but later noticed he had his cheek bone broken. Another colleague, Abdulkadir Omar, a reporter for Universal TV was being carried out as locals began to arrive and help out. He had his hand on his bleeding forehead.
It was a terrible few minutes. It's still impossible to understand how everything turned from a colorful celebration to grief within seconds.
During the rescue operation at the hotel, people concentrated on the dignitaries while injured journalists were left bleeding for some time. It helped us realize that we needed to create our own support, so we started the Somali Foreign Correspondents Association. We formed this union to establish a permanent office that will help journalists in times of emergencies. Our dream is to have at least one ambulance at our disposal to transport wounded colleagues to hospitals and to arrange evacuations if needed.
(Reporting from Mogadishu)

SOMALIA: Hospital desperate for specialists

MOGADISHU, 21 January 2010 (IRIN) - As conflict continues in Somalia, the main hospital in Mogadishu, the capital, lacks orthopedic specialists to handle the increasing number of patients with broken limbs, a doctor has said.

"Currently, the patients with the most serious injuries are mostly young; 30 of them require specialized treatment that is not available in the country," Mohamed Yusuf, the director-general of Madina Hospital, told IRIN. "Since 2009, we have seen hundreds of patients requiring orthopedic treatment but very few of them can afford specialized treatment; 98 percent of the patients are too poor."

Mogadishu has borne the brunt of the fighting in Somalia, which pits an opposition Islamist group against government troops. The country has been conflict-ridden since 1991 when President Siad Barre was ousted. Although a transitional government is in place, fighting continues in Mogadishu as well as in southern and central parts of the country.

Yusuf said 95 percent of the patients treated in Madina were victims of gunshots and artillery shelling. Of these, he said, 45 percent have limb injuries; 9 percent have chest wounds, 8 percent head injuries and 8 percent stomach injuries.

"We treat and sometimes operate on those with stomach wounds but injuries of the legs are problematic to treat here because we don't have an experienced orthopedic doctor to reconstruct broken bones," Yusuf said. "The most difficult cases involve injuries where a bullet hit the bone, causing fragmentation. Reconstruction using special metal is required but at the moment we do not have a doctor specializing in this sector in the country."

Yusuf said the International Committee of the Red Cross was the main agency supporting Madina and supplying medicine but the availability of specialist doctors remained a challenge: "The only foreign doctors here are from Qatar, working in the maternity sector."

At the same time, Yusuf said the number of injured children was increasing. Most of them, he said, were victims of mortar shelling and since there was no orthopedic expertise available locally, many ended up becoming disabled.

Habiba Ahmed, 41, mother of a nine-year-old boy with spinal injuries, told IRIN: "My child has been suffering for almost four months now, parts of his bones are missing; he was injured when a mortar hit our home. I have come to Madina Hospital for him to be treated but I am told he requires treatment outside the country, which I cannot afford. My child remains disabled."

A report released by Amnesty International on 21 January says indiscriminate attacks in 2009 by all parties to the armed conflict resulted in thousands of civilians killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

The UN estimates that at least 1.5 million Somalis are internally displaced while 3.7 million require humanitarian aid.

Source: IRIN

Stop supplying Somalia with arms: Amnesty

International donors should end weapons and other military supplies to Somalia's embattled government as lack of safeguards risks worsening the violence and human suffering, Amnesty International said.

The London-based rights group voiced concern that war-wracked Somalia's government was receiving weapons while “issues of vetting, accountability, arms management and respect for human rights by Somalia's police and armed forces remain largely unresolved,” according to its report.

“Without adequate safeguards, arms transfers may threaten the human rights and worsen the humanitarian situation of Somali civilians,” said the report: "Somalia: International Military and Policing Should be Reviewed."

The watchdog said until safeguards are in place “the international community should end all supplies of weapons, military and security equipment and financial assistance” to the transitional federal government.

It also called for the proper enforcement of a 1992 arms embargo on the Horn of Africa state.

Despite international backing, the Somali government has largely remained ineffective in the face of relentless attacks by Islamist rebels who have pared its control of the capital Mogadishu to just a few streets.

It also has no control of large swathes of the country, much of which is in the hands of the radical Islamist Shebab fighters, who together with the more political Hezb al-Islam militants have vowed to topple it.

Alliance-shifting fighters also pose the risk of arms ending up in the hands of the extremists, exacerbating Somalia's conflict which erupted in 1991 with the ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre.

“Unless effectively regulated and monitored, such material assistance could be used in committing serious violations of international humanitarian law,” warned the rights group.

Source: AFP

UNHCR: already 63,000 Somalis displaced in 2010

GENEVA -- The U.N. refugee agency says an estimated 63,000 Somalis have been chased from their homes since Jan 1. because of intense fighting in the country.
UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming says "fighting in central areas of Somalia rages on," continuing to uproot communities and leave people living in deplorable conditions outside of cities.
Fleming said Wednesday that 14,000 people were displaced over the last two weeks in the capital, Mogadishu.
She said fresh battles in central Somalia's Belet Weyne and Galgaduud areas have left thousands more homeless.
Somalia has one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with 1.5 people displaced inside the country and 560,000 registered as refugees in neighboring countries.

Source AP

Forgotten Diaries small grant final Report for peace brigade SMALL GRANT project.

Last week was the final week to undertake the remaining components of the FD small grant community action project entitled “Teenage peace brigade” to promote peace building, non violence conflict resolution and tolerance in local schools and the community.

The whole activities were carried out effectively with the full commitment of project team, partner organizations and newly recruited activist.

Three discussion forums in three schools and two public debates in the city administration HALL were held here in bahir dar city where we have recruited and trained children at schools to mobilize their peers and the community for peace building and non violence conflict resolution initiatives.

Those public debates were attended by students, parents and more of local residents consisted from all walks of life and the main objective of organizing these events was to introduce Forgotten Diaries project, promote teenage peace brigade community action project and to mobilize the community for the implantation of the newly introduced techniques and tools of the Forgotten diary small grant project.

Both discussion forums and public debate were co-chaired by club leaders and school administrators

Most participants of the public debate supported and appreciated the introduction of non violence conflict resolution and peace building techniques in the community at large and in schools in specific but some of attendants argued that it was not the right time to introduce these techniques to the schools or to the community because our priority issue isn’t conflict but are gender based violence, poverty and school drop. The debates continued for about 90 minutes and the outcomes of the panel discussion were similar to that of the events organized two weeks ago in the rest three schools while the outcomes of the public debates were the following

Establishment of student-teachers- parents committee (STPC) to undertake activities in the future
Prepared plan of action to arrange periodical meetings and gatherings in schools and our of schools.

Even after the completion of the project club leaders will mobilize their peers in their respective Schools and will organizes awareness raising campaigns and outreach programs.

The final report will be sent to you soon with relevant receipts of expenses made to undertake activities of the project, photos captured at events and stories of participants.

Prepared by Amare Abebaw
Project coordinator bahir-dar, Ethiopia

Progress report three on “Teenage peace brigade” project

By Amare Abebew project coordinator

Having received the second installment of the project from project coordinators other components of the project were arranged according to the pre determined schedule.

After the successful completion of our training on peace building, conflict resolution and leadership t selected students, the trainees were expected to mobilize their peer and the school community to introduce on peace building and conflict resolution techniques in their community, among the effective strategies we wanted to use to introduce these techniques were undertaking discussion forums and public debates in schools to initiate discussion in the school community about the issues.

Among the selected six schools Three schools were the first to start this outreach program in the project area, recruiting students in schools was started earlier this month and some of newly recruited students attended our discussion forums in their schools.

Speech of the principals of the schools were the opening of each discussion forums, the maximum capacity each discussion forum can host is predetermined to be 30 and invitation to participants of these forums was made according to that and to make sure more diverse community members attended the forums we invited some families of students, government officials, teachers and students of the schools, the three discussion forums were held in three schools at the same time and our club leaders showed their commitment by effectively coordinating these discussion forums.

Topics of the discussion forums were

Cause of conflicts in our schools

Consequences of conflicts in our schools

How can we work together to resolve these conflicts peacefully

How to prevent conflicts from being occurred

And the duration of the discussion forums was around 2 hours

The conclusion and consensuses reached at the end of the forums were valuable to work more consistently in schools and by this week the rest three schools will organize their discussion forums in their schools.

Somaliland: Street children "becoming the new gangsters"

The number of street children in Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland, is on the rise as more Ethiopian children cross the border in search of a better life.The immigrant children are adding to the burden of local street children, most of whom have been forced on to the streets by drought and insecurity within Somaliland and further south, in Somalia.“You can see old women accompanying about 20 children, of different ages, crossing the border into Somaliland from Ethiopia. These women may be their grandmothers, aunts or mothers,” Khadar Nour, chairman of the Hargeisa Child Protection Network (HCPN), told IRIN. "The children, who are mainly from the Oromo [region of Ethiopia], beg in the streets of Hargeisa with their mothers," Nour said. Some work as shoe shiners, sending their earnings to relatives in Ethiopia.Hargeisa is also a popular transit point for those seeking to travel further. “About 100 to 200 immigrant children cross the border from Ethiopia into Somaliland [annually] on their way to [the self-declared autonomous region of] Puntland, or to Yemen,” he said.Poverty and family break-ups have also fuelled the rise in numbers. There are about 3,000 children, most of them boys between five and 18, living on Hargeisa's streets.Crime threatWith the rising numbers, officials are concerned about an upsurge in crime. “They [the street children] are becoming a threat to the town's stability,” said Nour.“When they grow up, they still find themselves living in difficult conditions; it is for this reason that they grab mobile phones."Consequently, a number of the children are now in conflict with the law. In August, Nour said, a 16-year-old was sentenced to death in a Berbera regional court after being found guilty of murder. "The grown-up street children have become the new gangsters," Mohamed Ismail Hirsi, Hargeisa's Central Police Station commander, told IRIN."In the last 72 hours, we have arrested more than 30 street children who have committed crimes such as stealing mobile phones in different parts of the town."

In the past two years, some 5,000 knives and other weapons, which are commonly used in robberies, have been recovered from the street children, prompting calls for more focused interventions."People say good words in workshops, but few interventions for street children have been [implemented]," said Nour of HCPN, which recently started providing food and education support for the children.Once arrested, the children are charged as adults because a 2008 juvenile justice law has yet to be implemented.Glue sniffingThe children living rough are turning to drugs. "I use glue because when first I came to the streets I saw my friends sniffing it," Ahmed Omar, 12, told IRIN. "Whenever I use it, I am able to survive a difficult situation."The lack of a family support system also means more children may end up on the streets, as Abdi-Qani Ahmed’s experience illustrates. "When my mother and father divorced, there was no one left to take care of me," Ahmed, 11, said. "I used to get my food from restaurants in Hargeisa where I fed on leftovers.”During Ramadan, however, few if any restaurants are open. "I have to wait to see if someone gives me something to eat or not," he said.Living on the streets puts the children at risk of abuse from other street children as well as strangers. For protection, the children often seek refuge outside the police station at night.