\n<\/p>\n
Protests have erupted across Somalia following Israel\u2019s formal world-first recognition of the breakaway region of Somaliland, with demonstrators taking to the streets in multiple cities, including the capital, Mogadishu.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday morning, large crowds gathered at locations including Mogadishu\u2019s main football stadium and around the city\u2019s airport, where protesters waved Somali flags and chanted slogans calling for national unity.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The demonstrations, which also took place in Baidoa, Dhusamareb, Las Anod, Hobyo and Somalia\u2019s northeastern regions, came as President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud travelled to Istanbul for talks with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan following a stop in neighbouring Djibouti.<\/p>\n Somalia and Turkiye have close political and security ties, with Ankara emerging as a regional rival to Israel in recent months.<\/p>\n Small gatherings also took place in Borama, a city in western Somaliland, where the population has appeared more ambivalent about separation from Somalia, to express opposition.<\/p>\n Somaliland unilaterally declared independence in 1991 following a civil war, but has failed to gain international recognition despite maintaining its own currency, passport and army.<\/p>\n Somaliland\u2019s leaders say the state is the successor to the former British protectorate, which voluntarily merged with Italian Somaliland and has now reclaimed its independence. Somalia continues to claim Somaliland as part of its territory and does not recognise its independence.<\/p>\n Israel became the first and only country to formally recognise it as a sovereign state last Friday, describing the move as being in the spirit of the Abraham Accords that normalised ties between Israel and several Arab nations.<\/p>\n President Mohamud urged Somaliland\u2019s leadership over the weekend to reverse the decision, warning that its territory, overlooking the strategic gateway to the Red Sea, must not be used as a base for targeting other nations.<\/p>\n Yemen\u2019s Houthi rebels have said any Israeli presence in Somaliland would be considered \u201ca military target for our armed forces\u201d.<\/p>\n Shortly after Somaliland announced mutual recognition with Israel on Friday, President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi said the move \u201cis not a threat, not an act of hostility\u201d towards any state, and warned that Somalia\u2019s insistence on unified institutions risks \u201cprolonging divisions rather than healing\u201d them.<\/p>\n The widespread public anger in Somalia reflects a rare show of political unity, where leaders across the spectrum have condemned Israel\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n On Monday, the National Consultative Council \u2014 chaired by Mohamud and including the prime minister, federal state presidents and regional governors \u2014 rejected the recognition as an \u201cillegal step\u201d that threatens regional security stretching from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.<\/p>\n Four federal member states issued coordinated statements over the weekend denouncing the move. However, Puntland and Jubbaland \u2014 both of which recently announced their withdrawal from Somalia\u2019s federal system over electoral and constitutional disputes \u2014 have remained silent.<\/p>\n Most United Nations Security Council (UNSC) members slammed Israel\u2019s recognition of Somaliland at a meeting convened on Monday in response to the move, which several countries said may also have serious implications for Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n The United States was the only member of the 15-member body not to condemn Israel\u2019s formal recognition at the emergency meeting in New York on Monday, although it said its own position on Somaliland had not changed.<\/p>\n Somalia\u2019s UN ambassador, Abu Bakr Dahir Osman, warned that the recognition \u201caims to promote the fragmentation of Somalia\u201d and raised concerns it could facilitate the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to northwestern Somalia, a fear echoed by several other nations.<\/p>\n \u201cThis utter disdain for law and morality must be stopped now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n US deputy representative Tammy Bruce told the council that \u201cIsrael has the same right to establish diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state\u201d, though she added Washington had made \u201cno announcement\u201d regarding its own recognition of Somaliland.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s deputy UN ambassador, Jonathan Miller, defended the decision as \u201cnot a hostile step toward Somalia\u201d and made the case to the UNSC for other countries to follow its lead.<\/p>\n Somalia\u2019s state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Omar, thanked UNSC members for their \u201cclear and principled\u201d stance on the issue in a post on X.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Protests have erupted across Somalia following Israel\u2019s formal world-first recognition of the breakaway region of Somaliland, with demonstrators taking to the streets in multiple cities, including the capital, Mogadishu. On Tuesday morning, large crowds gathered at locations including Mogadishu\u2019s main football stadium and around the city\u2019s airport, where protesters waved Somali flags and chanted slogans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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