Fresh armed conflict broke out before dawn on Thursday between Somalia’s federal government troops and aligned militias in the peripheral areas of Baidoa, the key southwestern city at the center of a growing national political power struggle. Witnesses and local officials reported sustained heavy gunfire across the front lines, forcing hundreds of civilian residents to abandon their homes in search of safer shelter as the violence intensified.
According to statements from Somalia’s Defense Ministry, the outbreak of hostilities followed an offensive launched by fighters loyal to Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen, the former president of Somalia’s South West state, alongside militants linked to al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-affiliated extremist group that has waged an insurgency in Somalia for decades. Wednesday’s clashes mark the most recent escalation of a bitter political and security dispute between Somalia’s central federal government and Laftagareen over administrative control of the strategic South West region.
The current crisis traces back to late March, when federal security forces seized full control of Baidoa on March 30. Shortly after the government takeover, Laftagareen stepped down from his position as regional leader, a post he had held since 2018. After several hours of intense exchanges of fire, armed clashes tapered off by early Thursday afternoon. As of the latest updates, no official government statement has been released confirming total casualty numbers or the full scope of destruction caused by the fighting. In the aftermath of the violence, government military units deployed to conduct patrols across Baidoa’s urban streets, while emergency ambulances scrambled to reach injured people trapped near conflict zones. Local residents slowly began to reemerge from hiding to assess damage to their properties and clean debris from public walkways.
Dr. Abdikafi Omar Mohamud, who leads the emergency department at Baidoa’s Bay Regional Hospital, confirmed to the Associated Press that medical teams at his facility had treated 24 wounded civilians and received the body of one civilian killed in the clashes. Abdullahi Haji, a long-term Baidoa resident, described the chaos of the outbreak in a phone interview with AP, saying he fled his residence immediately after hearing heavy gunfire erupt, noting that stray bullets began hitting residential neighborhoods within minutes of the first shots.
Located roughly 245 kilometers, or 150 miles, northwest of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, Baidoa holds outsized strategic and humanitarian importance for the entire country. The city serves as a major coordination hub for international aid organizations working across southern Somalia, and it currently hosts more than 500,000 people who have already been displaced by previous rounds of conflict and the severe ongoing drought devastating much of the Horn of Africa. This latest violence comes just weeks after earlier clashes in and around Baidoa killed at least four civilians and left another 98 people wounded, adding to a growing toll of civilian harm in the already unstable region.
This report was compiled with on-the-ground contributions from Associated Press correspondent Bishar Mayow Mukhtar in Baidoa, Somalia.