In Somalia, Mothers Fear Sons Were Sent to Ethiopia Conflict

Tigray women who fled a conflict in the Ethiopia's Tigray region, wait to receive aid at Village 8, the transit center near the Lugdi border crossing, eastern Sudan, Sunday, Nov. 22, 2020.  (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
Tigray women who fled a conflict in the Ethiopia's Tigray region, wait to receive aid at Village 8, the transit center near the Lugdi border crossing, eastern Sudan, Sunday, Nov. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
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In Somalia, Mothers Fear Sons Were Sent to Ethiopia Conflict

Tigray women who fled a conflict in the Ethiopia's Tigray region, wait to receive aid at Village 8, the transit center near the Lugdi border crossing, eastern Sudan, Sunday, Nov. 22, 2020.  (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
Tigray women who fled a conflict in the Ethiopia's Tigray region, wait to receive aid at Village 8, the transit center near the Lugdi border crossing, eastern Sudan, Sunday, Nov. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

Pressure is growing on Somalia’s government amid allegations that Somali soldiers have been sent to fight in neighboring Ethiopia’s deadly Tigray conflict.

Mothers have held rare protests in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere, demanding to know the fate of their children who originally were sent to Eritrea for military training. They fear their children have been deployed to the Tigray region, where Ethiopian forces have been fighting Tigray ones since November in a conflict that threatens to destabilize the Horn of Africa.

“I heard that our children who were sent to Eritrea for military training have been taken and their responsibility was turned over to (Ethiopian Prime Minister) Abiy Ahmed to fight for him,” Fatuma Moallim Abdulle, the mother of 20-year-old soldier Ahmed Ibrahim Jumaleh, told The Associated Press.

“According to the information I gathered, our children were taken straight to Mekele city,” the capital of the Tigray region, she said.

“You may understand how I feel, I am a mother who carried her child for nine months in my belly, that’s my blood and flesh.”

Ethiopia this week denied reports of the presence of Somali soldiers in Tigray, and it continued to deny the presence of Eritrean ones.

Abiy made peace with neighboring Eritrea in 2018, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now critics say Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have teamed up in the conflict against a common enemy in the now-fugitive Tigray leaders, who dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly three decades before Abiy took office and embarked on around of regional peacemaking that included Somalia.

Somalia President Abdullahi Mohamed Abdullahi has been asked by the head of the country’s parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, Abdulqadir Ossoble Ali, to investigate allegations of participation in the Tigray conflict.

“We have the oversight right to check what our government is doing,” Ali wrote in the letter distributed to media outlets.

And the former deputy director for Somalia’s intelligence agency, Ismael Dahir Osman, has said “it is a question worth asking why these soldiers are not yet back home after more than a year when their training would have concluded long ago.”

Somalia’s information minister, Osman Abokor Dubbe, this week denied the “propaganda” that Somali soldiers who had been outside the country for training have been involved in the Tigray conflict.

“There are no Somali troops requested by the Ethiopian government to fight for them and fight in Tigray,” he said.

The issue has emerged at a sensitive time in Somalia. The country is set to hold national elections in the coming weeks, but two federal states have refused to participate and the opposition accuses the president of trying to push ahead with a partial vote.

“The parents of those children keep calling us and they don’t have any contact with their children, and some of them were told that their boys have died,” one opposition presidential candidate, Abdurahman Abdishakur Warsame, told the AP.

“According to the information we’re receiving, those boys were taken to the war in northern Ethiopia. We’re calling for an independent national commission to investigate the matter, and if it is proven to be true, it will amount to treason of national scale.”



Florida Man Shot Israeli Visitors Thinking They Were Palestinians, Police Say

 Relatives and supporters of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza mark 500 days of their captivity by spreading a massive Israeli flag depicting an hourglass in the Mediterranean Sea, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. Hebrew of the flag reads "Without the abductees, Israel runs out". (AP)
Relatives and supporters of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza mark 500 days of their captivity by spreading a massive Israeli flag depicting an hourglass in the Mediterranean Sea, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. Hebrew of the flag reads "Without the abductees, Israel runs out". (AP)
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Florida Man Shot Israeli Visitors Thinking They Were Palestinians, Police Say

 Relatives and supporters of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza mark 500 days of their captivity by spreading a massive Israeli flag depicting an hourglass in the Mediterranean Sea, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. Hebrew of the flag reads "Without the abductees, Israel runs out". (AP)
Relatives and supporters of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza mark 500 days of their captivity by spreading a massive Israeli flag depicting an hourglass in the Mediterranean Sea, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. Hebrew of the flag reads "Without the abductees, Israel runs out". (AP)

A Florida man was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted murder after shooting at a vehicle with two men who he thought were Palestinians but turned out to be Israeli visitors, local authorities and media reports said.

The website of Miami-Dade County Corrections says the suspect, 27-year-old Mordechai Brafman, was charged with two counts of attempted murder and booked on Sunday for the shooting on Saturday.

A police official confirmed earlier reports from local media that Brafman said in an interview with police that while he was driving his truck in Miami Beach, he saw two people he thought were Palestinian. He stopped, shot at and killed them.

However, the victims survived. One was shot in the shoulder and the other had a wounded forearm. They turned out to be Israeli visitors and not Palestinians, police said.

A representative or lawyer for Brafman could not be immediately identified by Reuters.

Human rights advocates say there has been a rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and antisemitic hate in the United States since the start of US ally Israel's war in Gaza following an Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian group Hamas.