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Somalia and Somaliland Say No Talks on Resettling Palestinians from Gaza

A Palestinian boy picks flowers close to the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on March 11, 2025. (AFP)
A Palestinian boy picks flowers close to the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on March 11, 2025. (AFP)
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Somalia and Somaliland Say No Talks on Resettling Palestinians from Gaza

A Palestinian boy picks flowers close to the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on March 11, 2025. (AFP)
A Palestinian boy picks flowers close to the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on March 11, 2025. (AFP)

Somalia and its breakaway region of Somaliland have not received any proposal from the United States or Israel to resettle Palestinians from Gaza, their foreign ministers said on Friday, with Mogadishu saying it categorically rejected any such move.

The Associated Press quoted US and Israeli officials as saying their governments had contacted officials from Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland to discuss using their territory for resettling Palestinians from the devastated Gaza Strip.

Sudanese officials said they rejected the proposal by the United States, and officials from Somalia and Somaliland said they were unaware of any contacts, AP reported.

Somalia's Foreign Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi said his country would categorically reject "any proposal or initiative, from any party, that would undermine the Palestinian people’s right to live peacefully on their ancestral land".

He told Reuters that Somalia's government had not received any such proposal, adding that Mogadishu was against any plan that would involve the use of Somali territory for the resettlement of other populations.

Abdirahman Dahir Adan, Somaliland's foreign minister, told Reuters that "there are no talks with anyone regarding Palestinians".

Unlike Somalia, which has been battling an extremist insurgency for more than 17 years, Somaliland has mostly been at peace since declaring independence from the Mogadishu government in 1991.

But Somaliland is not recognized by any country and its government has expressed hope that US President Donald Trump will be favorable to its cause.

The White House and the US State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

RECONSTRUCTION PLANS

The foreign ministry of Sudan, a country dealing with a devastating civil war, also did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

A senior Sudanese government official told Reuters that Sudan had not received such a proposal and that it would be unacceptable.

Arab leaders adopted a $53 billion Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza that would avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave, in contrast to Trump's vision of a "Middle East Riviera".

Trump has proposed a US takeover of the Gaza Strip to reconstruct the enclave, wrecked by fighting since October 2023, after earlier suggesting that Palestinians should be permanently displaced.

Trump's plan reinforced long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes, and was widely rejected internationally.

Asked about the AP report, Michele Zaccheo, UN spokesperson in Geneva, said: "Any plan that could or would lead to the forced displacement of people or any type of ethnic cleansing is something that we would obviously be against, as it is against international law."

Taher Al-Nono, political adviser to the leadership of the Palestinian group Hamas, told Reuters the proposal to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Africa was "silly" and had been rejected by the Palestinians and Arab leaders.

"The Palestinians will not leave their land," he said. Israeli ministers say they want to examine ways of facilitating the voluntary departure of Palestinians from Gaza but are not considering forcible expulsions.

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Sudanese Seek Refuge Underground in Besieged Darfur City

Desperate for safety from bombardment of Sudan's besieged city of El-Fasher, Darfur, residents have built makeshift bunkers. Muammar Ibrahim / AFP
Desperate for safety from bombardment of Sudan's besieged city of El-Fasher, Darfur, residents have built makeshift bunkers. Muammar Ibrahim / AFP
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Sudanese Seek Refuge Underground in Besieged Darfur City

Desperate for safety from bombardment of Sudan's besieged city of El-Fasher, Darfur, residents have built makeshift bunkers. Muammar Ibrahim / AFP
Desperate for safety from bombardment of Sudan's besieged city of El-Fasher, Darfur, residents have built makeshift bunkers. Muammar Ibrahim / AFP

Beneath the broken earth of the besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher in the western region of Darfur, Nafisa Malik clutches her five children close.
As shells rain down, the 45-year-old mother tries to shield them in a cramped hole barely big enough to crouch in.
"Time slows down here," Malik said, from her home near El-Fasher's Hajer Gadou market.
"We sit in the darkness, listening, trying to guess when it's over," she told AFP by phone.
For almost two years the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudan's army have waged a war that has killed tens of thousands, AFP said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday called it a "crisis of staggering scale and brutality".
El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, is the only major city in Darfur still under army control, making it a strategic prize.
The RSF has tried for months to seize it.
Malik's crude shelter, held up by splintered wooden planks and scraps of rusted metal, is one of thousands in the war-battered city, according to residents.
The army regained much of the capital Khartoum this year, but the RSF has intensified its attacks on El-Fasher.
Desperate for safety from artillery and drone strikes, residents have built makeshift bunkers.
Some are hurriedly excavated foxholes, others are more solid and reinforced with sandbags.
Mohammed Ibrahim, 54, once believed hiding under beds would be enough, "until houses were hit".
"We lost neighbors," he said by phone. "The children were terrified."
Determined to protect his family, Ibrahim dug a hole in his yard. He covered it with sacks of soil with only a narrow entrance.
Doctors underground
Despite the RSF's siege cutting off supply lines, the army and an allied coalition of armed groups known as the Joint Forces still hold most of the city.
Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab, which uses satellite and other data to track the conflict, has identified "clusters of damage".
It details destruction from munitions and fires including near the airport, market and in the city's east and south.
The researchers reported bombardment of "residential structures", and said its findings are consistent with Sudanese army air strikes as well as RSF artillery and ground attacks.
Staff at the Saudi Hospital, one of the last functioning medical facilities in the city, carved out an underground shelter last October.
"We use it as an operating room during the strikes, lit only by our phones," one doctor told AFP, requesting anonymity for his safety.
Every explosion sends tremors through the shelter walls, shaking surgical instruments and rattling nerves.
El-Fasher was historically the seat of the Darfur sultanate and has long been a center of power in Darfur.
Now, it is all that stands between total RSF control of Darfur, whose gold resources provide the paramilitaries with vital revenue, according to the United States Treasury Department.
The African Union warned last week that Sudan risks partition.
"The army is well entrenched in El-Fasher, making it exceedingly difficult for the RSF to capture the city," said Marc Lavergne, a Sudan expert at France's University of Tours.
Crucial to the army's war effort in El-Fasher is its support from the Zaghawa ethnic group.
'Existential threat'
Forces from prominent Zaghawa figures, Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi and Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim, have joined the city's defense after being neutral at the war's beginning.
"The Zhagawa see the fall of El-Fasher as an existential threat," said Sudanese political analyst Kholood Khair.
"They are concerned that the RSF would commit reprisal attacks against them for breaking their neutrality -- if they capture the city," she told AFP.
But as the RSF tightens its grip, the army and its allies face a dilemma: hold the city at immense human cost or risk ceding a stronghold that Khair said could shift the war's balance.
"Holding the city depletes resources," she said. "But losing it would be catastrophic."
A UN-backed assessment declared famine in three displacement camps around El-Fasher. Famine is expected to spread to five more areas, including El-Fasher itself, by May.
Aid is practically nonexistent.
Remaining humanitarian agencies have suspended operations as the RSF attempts to break through, attacking camps and villages around El-Fasher.
"Bringing goods in has become nearly impossible," shop owner Ahmed Suleiman said. "Even if you take the risk, you have to pay bribes at checkpoints, which drives up prices."
Leni Kinzli from the World Food Programme warned of dire consequences.
"If aid continues to be cut off, the fallout will be catastrophic", she said.