Mogadishu
Somali Magazine –Ilyas Ali Noor, the Southwest regional state’s minister for information, made his resignation from his position official on Saturday night. He cited the Friday gunfight in Baidoa, the interim capital of the Southwest regional state, which resulted in at least ten fatalities.
Minister Ilyas Noor, who is now in Baidoa, accused Southwest’s President Abdiaziz Laftagren in a video posted on Facebook of disrespecting ongoing peace efforts and disobeying elders’ warnings not to attack the residence of former finance minister Mohamed Fargeti.
“I want to make it clear that the Southwest administration was to blame for the issue in Baidoa yesterday. Negotiation may have ended the slaughter and prevented it from happening. We were not respected by the state government, “said Ilyas Noor, a minister.
In a news conference in Mogadishu, Mohamed Adan Ibrahim Fargeti, who was the Minister of Finance in Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke’s cabinet, claimed that the state security forces had attacked his home in Baidoa.
Ilyas urged the Ethiopian military stationed in the Southwest regions to support the election and the right of the electorate to select their own representatives.
Early on Friday morning in Baidoa, a gunfight broke out between South West State troops and militias supporting the opposition candidates, leaving at least ten people dead.
While the situation is still tight, local media in Baidoa reported that on Saturday, calmness returned to the city.
Recently, a political scuffle between opposition candidates and current President Abdiaziz Laftagareen has been raging in Baidoa.
President Abdiaziz Laftagaren’s term was extended by the Southwest Parliament in 2019 by one year, bringing the end of his term’s tenure to December 19, 2023. The opposition, however, was against the president’s term extension.