MOGADISHU (Halbeeg News) – The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed that 43 dead have been gathered in the last week from the front lines of the ongoing fighting in disputed town of Las-Anod in northern Somalia.
The ICRC stated in a statement Friday that the Somali Red Crescent Society had brought 110 wounded persons to hospitals in the previous week amid battles that had raged for months in and around Las-Anod. The statement did not identify the dead or those to blame.
Somaliland seceded from Somalia three decades ago and has pursued independence ever since. Somaliland’s security forces have been fighting clan militias that want to join Somalia.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the fighting. It is not known how many hundreds of people have been killed in total. The ICRC reported “widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure” in Las-Anod, the capital of the Sool region.
Somaliland’s government in a statement Thursday condemned what it alleged were images circulating of mistreatment of its captured soldiers and reminded combatants of the Geneva Conventions guidelines, as well as Islamic custom, for the treatment of prisoners.
Hundreds of people have been captured on both sides in the latest fighting, and the ICRC said it had managed to make its first visit to 300 held by the militias. Four wounded detainees were taken to a hospital, it said. ICRC staff had previously visited captured militia forces in the Somaliland capital.
Somaliland’s defense ministry earlier this year denied that the army had shelled the main hospital in Las-Anod.
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