Tension has erupted in the northern regions of Puntland and breakaway Somaliland over the disputed areas of Sool and Sanaag, media reports said.
| Wasn't Sool big among the Hittites? He had something to do with Gozer, I think... |
Last week, Puntland militia took total control of the Sool regional capital, Las Anod. A Puntland official told reporters that his militia went to Las Anod to stop fighting between two feuding clans in the area.
| "Knock it off, or we're occupying you!" |
Somaliland regional House of Representatives called on the government to secure Somalilandâs borders. Media reports from Somaliland said that it had also dispatched forces to Sool. Sool and Sanaag fall geographically within the borders of pre-independence British Somaliland. When Somaliland seceded from the rest of Somalia in 1991, it claimed that Sanaag and Sool were part of its territory. When Puntland established its autonomous regional administration, it counterclaimed that most of the clans in the disputed regions were associated with clans from its territory. According a local newspaper report on Wednesday, people were fleeing Las Anod in fear of possible fighting between the advancing Somaliland forces and those of Puntland. Humanitarian agencies recently delivered food to thousands of drought-affected nomads in the Sool Plateau. A humanitarian official said that any conflict in that area would complicate an already precarious humanitarian situation. âWe urge the authorities on both sides to resolve any differences peacefully and continue to enable humanitarian agencies to deliver assistance to the drought-affected communitiesâ, Calum McLean, head of UNOCHA-Somalia, was quoted by UN news agency. |