For several years after war erupted in Côte d'Ivoire in 2002, children were recruited to fight on all sides of the conflict.

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) strongly condemns today's arrest of Director of Somali Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) Mowlid Haji Abdi by the police of Puntland Regional State in northeastern Somalia.

Security forces in the semiautonomous Somali territory of Puntland arrested the director-general of Somali Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), an independent broadcaster based in the northern port city of Bossaso.

Ethiopian troops in central Somalia were ambushed Wednesday as they withdrew from one town and were heading back towards the Ethiopian border, locals said.

At least 13 people including a senior Islamic Courts militia commander were killed yesterday in heavy battles in a remote part of central Somalia, witnesses and local sources reported.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has denounced the killing of one of its truck drivers in Somalia - the second incident of its kind this year - by militiamen who stopped the agency's food convoy at an illegal checkpoint in the central part of the strife-torn nation.

The following is a fact sheet from the United States Department of State:

A roadside explosion targeting a Somali police official in the capital Mogadishu hit a police car Wednesday, killing two officers inside and two civilian bystanders, witnesses said.

The United Nations' Special Envoy to Somalia, Mr. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, has sent out a special request to the Somali people in the Diaspora to support the ongoing peace process to help save the country.

The Somali government denied claims by a rights group that its forces and their Ethiopian allies were committing atrocities against the civilian population - even as a civil society source said the report did not go far enough.

Reporters Without Borders said today it was disgusted by a murder attempt against Bisharo Mohammed Waeys, celebrated presenter on the privately-owned Eastern Television Network (ETN), on 4 May, the last woman working openly as a journalist in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, north-eastern Somalia.

On April 4, MY Le Ponant, an 850-ton three-masted luxury sailing yacht owned by a French firm headed by Lebanese-born businessman Jacques Saadé was en route from the Seychelles to the Mediterranean when it was seized in international waters in the Gulf of Aden by Somali pirates.

Amnesty International has called for the formation of a commission to investigate and persecute those involved in crimes against humanity in Somalia.

Hundreds of families have been displaced in Somalia's southwestern region of Gedo after two days of inter-clan fighting in which 13 people were killed and 24 wounded, according to locals.

Civilian population in Somalia has been targets of human rights abuses. This is according to a report released by human rights watch group, Amnesty International in Nairobi today.

NUSOJ is outraged by the vicious attack by unidentified gunmen against female television journalist Bisharo Mohammed Waeys, which took place in Bossasso, Bari region, on 4 May 2008.

Amnesty International today released a report revealing the dire human rights and humanitarian crisis facing the people of Somalia.

Many thousands of Somalis took to the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, on 5 May, shutting down most of the city in a protest against high food prices and traders' refusal to accept old Somali shilling notes, witnesses said.

A key opposition leader in Somalia has said the opposition will continue to pursue peace talks with the country's Ethiopian-backed transitional government despite a deadly U.S. air strike last week.

Protestors took to the streets in Somalia's dangerous capital Monday to demonstrate against rising food prices and the business community's refusal to accept 1,000-note Somali Shillings, Radio Garowe reported.

Kenyan anti-terrorism officials are on high alert following the killing of an Islamist said to be the Al Qaeda leader in Somalia in a US attack on Thursday, the Sunday Nation has learnt.

A traditional elder in northern Somalia's Puntland region was arrested by local police Sunday morning after giving an interview to the BBC yesterday, relatives said.

Four nations a week today presented the UN Security Council with a draft resolution to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia. The draft, however, sidestepped an issue fundamental to solving the problem: fishing.

The finance minister in the Somali self-governing state of Puntland held a press conference Sunday in the port city of Bossaso, 1500km north of the capital Mogadishu.

The mayor of Somalia' s capital has publicly rejected an idea suggested by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Abdisalam that new regional governments built on community consensus will be established across the country.