The 2009 was a year of darkness, death, displacement, detention and violence against journalists and the entire media fraternity in Somalia, according to the annual report unveiled by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).

The number of reported rapes in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Bosasso, in Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, is increasing and rape has become "a major problem", says a civil society source.

This month's deadly bombing of a medical school's graduation ceremony in Somalia will likely reduce the popularity of the country's main Islamist insurgency, despite the group's denial of involvement, say analysts. A civilian uprising against Al-Shabab seems to be under way, with street demonstrations in Mogadishu on 7 December, and in camps for the internally displaced (IDPs) on 8 December.

The International Federation of the Journalists (IFJ) has strongly condemned the murders of Somali journalist Mohamed Amin Adan Abdulle, a reporter with Radio Shabelle and Hassan Zubeyr Haji Hassan, a cameraman working with Al-Arabia TV who were killed this morning in a bomb attack on a hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Somali gunmen have released two foreign journalists who were held for 14 months in the capital city of Mogadishu of war-torn Somalia. Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan and Canadian freelance reporter Amanda Lindhout were abducted in Mogadishu in August 2008 while they were visiting a refugee camp outside of the capital.

Islamist hardliners in Somalia have taken over the control of strategic town, Dobley, a southern border between Somalia and Kenya, after clashes with a rival group, reports say on Thursday. Al-shabaab fighters attacked and took over the town in the early hours of Wednesday from rival group Hizbul Islam.

A Somali woman has been stoned to death for committing what a judge has said was adultery. The 20-year-old divorcee was executed after confessing to having had sex with a 29-year-old unmarried man.

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) condemns in the strongest possible terms the targeted shooting of two Somali journalists working for international news media organizations in Galkayo and Mogadishu.

At least 83,000 Somali children and women benefited from the Child Health Days Campaign carried out with United Nations support in the Afgooye corridor, which hosts displaced people who fled their homes owing to the violence in the capital, Mogadishu.

Flash floods caused by four days of torrential rains have displaced more than 15,000 people in the southwestern town of El-Waq near the Kenyan border and submerged most homes and businesses, say locals.

The international community is failing over 1.5 million internally displaced persons in Somalia at a time when the humanitarian crisis is deepening, Walter Kaelin, the Representative of the UN Secretary General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, said at the end of his mission to Somalia in Nairobi, Kenya.

Two Somali 'pirates' captured after they attacked a Spanish fishing boat are likely to spend a long time behind bars, Agustín Velloso Santisteban writes in this week’s Pambazuka News, given that they are also poor, black and Muslim. Highlighting the struggle for survival and hardships so many Somalis face, Santisteban suggests that there are other more dangerous ‘pirates’ out there that ought to be pursued and brought to book for far worse crimes.

Khadijo Mahamud, a mother of five, goes to Bakara market every day to look for work, despite the constant shelling. Her youngest child is 10 months old but Mahamud knows she has no choice but to leave him with her 10-year-old and venture out to find food for the family. “I have to leave the children and try and find something for them to eat; I will do almost any job," she told IRIN on 14 October. "Some days I get to wash clothes, but other days I work as a porter or clean stores.”

Officials are warning renewed fighting is likely between two rival clans in breakaway Somaliland, where they are reported to have amassed a large number of weapons and positioned hundreds of militiamen near disputed farmland in Gabiley region. "We are afraid new conflict could break out any time," a police officer, who requested anonymity, told IRIN, adding that the clans had at least 1,000 militiamen, armed with automatic rifles such as AK47 rifles and BKM handguns, in or near the Elberdale farmland area.

Somalia's U.N.-backed government has recruited more than 170 young Kenyans and former servicemen to help it fight rebels in the failed Horn of Africa state, local leaders in eastern Kenya said. Mohamed Gabow, the mayor of Garissa, told Reuters the enrolment of ethnic Somali Kenyans was being conducted at a home in Bulla Iftin village, on the outskirts of his town.

Residents of the Somali port of Kismayo are burying the dead and tending to the injured after a day of fierce clashes between rival Islamist groups. Al-Shabab has gained control of the city and the Hizbul-Islam fighters have withdrawn to villages to the west.

The drought crisis in war-torn Somalia is turning increasingly acute and spreading to regions previously spared, with half the country’s 7 million people in need of aid, an increasing risk of deaths, and insufficient international donor response, a senior United Nations official has said.“Somalia needs to be seen as a priority case,” UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Mark Bowden told a news briefing in New York.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from several articles with commentary both on U.S. policy and on other aspects of the situation in Somalia. Elizabeth Dickson in Foreign Policy comments on disagreements within the U.S. government about the shipment of arms supplies to the government in Mogadishu. Minnesota Public Radio comments on repeated airport searches of two prominent Somali-American professors at the University of Minnesota.

Nine solders serving in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) were killed Thursday after militant group, the Al Shabaab, hit the main headquarters of the mission, killing peacekeepers and wounding senior force commanders. The African Union (AU) immediately condemned the attacks and asked all the neighbouring countries to impose sanctions against the terrorist elements fighting efforts to restore stability in Somalia.

Police should release Mohamed Osman, director of Radio Horyaal, who has been held without charge since his arrest on Saturday outside parliament in Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said.