Saboteurs who were planting bombs on the on the eastern side of the Yagoori bridge on the road between Oog and Las Anod blew themselves to smithereens in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
According to Somaliland army officers who reached the spot immediately after the explosion and residents, collecting together the remains, of the strategic eastern town, the number of the bombers could not be ascertained.
Only one whose upper torso mostly stayed together could be facially identified.
It is believed though, that the leader of the group, Amin Sahal Dubad a.k.a. Indhacase, formerly of the Somalia Intelligence Agency – NISA – and the builder of the bomb is among the killed.
“We have identified at least three other skulls the rest of whom were strewn all around the place in small pieces,” a resident said.
A spokesperson for the town blamed the fighters who are still wreaking havoc in Las Anod, the region capital of Sool region, some 59 kilometers to the east, for the attempt to blow the bridge.
“It is now clear who had been behind the assassinations in the Las Anod town on which pretext started a massive population flight, destruction, untold of suffering and the loss of hundreds of lives and the injury of much much more,” he said.
The spokesman send an appeal to Diasporans hailing from Sool.
“Expatriate elements living abroad, especially in the United States and Europe, must stop financing the senseless war they started in the region. What is happened here is proof of the nefarious conspiracy whose objective has nothing to do with responding to professed social grievances. We say, Stop!” he added.
Garaad Jama Garaad Ali, who chaired their consultations, ordered everybody to take up arms thereby bringing the 15-year development of the city to an abrupt standstill.
Reliable sources have maintained that the former President of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo have started what is now become known as the ‘Las Anod Conspiracy’ long before he moved to Villa Somalia in 2012. The anti-Somaliland he covertly started and financed blossomed during his reign but bloomed out to the open after his failure for second term bid at the presidency – an eventuality he did not count on obviously.
Presently, the aimless strife the Garaads started appears to have hit insurmountable obstacles with members of the leading cabal splitting into different conflicting interests.
Some want to take the region to join Puntland, a federal member state of Somalia, with whom parts of the regional population share kinship. Others want to go all the way to Mogadishu and beg President Hassan sheikh Mohamud of a gubernatorial status having failed to convince anybody of a state of their own to be the called the SSC.
But much more importantly, the majority of the population spanning the largest area of the Sool region belonging to the same clan as those of eastern Sool. living in between Las Anod and Oog, have always correctly maintained that co-existing with the rest of Somaliland was where the region’s best interests lay.
Bearing witness to this surmise, displaced families are coming out of their induced fear of the assassins, are slowly but boldly accusing the erring traditional leaders and the extremist armed elements behind them of concocting lies to destroy their lives, stopping education, derailing development, dwarfing and/or completely stymieing a thriving business atmosphere and by winding back people’s dreams some thirty years back.
The Somaliland army has been ordered to stay out of Las Anod since early February and to respond only to attacks – under which command they still stay despite frequent raids made on their positions by military elements who crossed over from Puntland, Al-Shabaab, Daesh and local elements who temporarily joined hands under the impression parts of the Sool region would qualify as a federal state of Somalia – far-fetched dream.
Without that order, the army could have secured the whole region within a day or two given its might.
Last Thursday, the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Somaliland ruled that the whole student population enrolled from primary to secondary estimated at 40 000 who missed final year exams can continue their education at any of the other Somaliland cities on merit of their recorded scores of the previous year.
Due to this, a good number of students taking advantage of the call are filtering back to cities such as Erigavo, Burao, Borama and Hargeisa defying the false alarms and threats of the traditional and military leaders who put the scare of their lives on unsuspecting populations they displaced by design.
Despite all the evidence and telltale signs to the contrary, misinformed develpment partners of Somaliland had been urging the government of Somaliland to leave the area to the mercy of militants not fully grasping the far-reaching consequences a lawless enclave of Somaliland would pose on the whole region as a god-given haven for extremists and terrorists.
