Axadle - Breaking news and analysis from Somalia, the Horn of Africa, and across Africa.

With a key Russian oil route still crippled by wartime strikes, Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine expects to restore enough of the damaged pipeline to resume operations to Hungary and Slovakia before April is out. "As for the oil pipeline, as we promised, it will be repaired by the end of April - not completely, but enough for it to function," Mr Zelensky told reporters in Berlin. The pipeline’s condition had become a flashpoint in Mr Zelensky’s fraught relationship with Hungary's outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as the…

Tuesday April 14, 2026 Displaced families grapple with food, water shortages/File Photo/Ergo Pastoralist families uprooted by drought in southern Somalia’s Lower Juba region have reached Kulbiyow, a small border town near Kenya, stripped of their livestock, shelter and dependable access to food. They left behind rural settlements around Buulo-Haaji, near Kismayo, after months of severe drought depleted water points, killed animals and shattered the livelihoods that sustained them. Among those now struggling in Kulbiyow is…

President Daniel Chapo says Mozambique’s campaign against insurgents has turned a corner, with national security forces working alongside regional partners to retake areas once controlled by militants. Under sustained pressure, he noted, the armed groups are “constantly on the move,” and authorities have recorded no confirmed kidnappings in the past six months. Addressing the National Council of the Mozambique Youth Organisation (OJM), the ruling Frelimo Party’s youth wing, the President also appealed for responsible…

A fresh burst of Israeli fire has killed at least six Palestinians, among them two children, in separate incidents across Gaza, local health officials said, adding another strain to the fragile US-brokered ceasefire. In Gaza City, four people, including a young child, were killed when a strike hit a police vehicle, according to the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. The ministry said one of those killed was a police officer and that nine bystanders were wounded, some of them critically. Farther north, near Jabalia, three-year-old…

Somalia: Defense Minister Threatens Military Action Against Federal States MOGADISHU — Somalia’s Defence Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi has warned that the federal government may resort to military force against federal states that resist national directives, saying the Somali army will assert its authority throughout the country. Speaking in a recent address, Fiqi took aim at leaders of some federal member states, accusing them of opposing the deployment of national forces and treating the presence of the military as a threat.…

Tuesday April 14, 2026 Mogadishu (AX) — Somalia’s Federal Parliament reached the end of its four-year mandate on Tuesday, April 14, closing a term that has anchored the country’s post-transition political order since lawmakers were sworn in on April 14, 2022, under Article 60 of the Provisional Constitution. The bicameral legislature played a pivotal role in the months that followed, providing the legal basis for the election of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on May 15, 2022, and the formation of the federal government…

PORT SUDAN, 14 April 2026 – As Sudan passes the three-year mark of its conflict, an average of three infants have been born into war every minute, Save the Children warns, painting a stark picture of mothers and newborns facing life-threatening conditions amid collapsing health services and repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure. New analysis of data from Sudan’s Ministry of Health shows roughly 5.6 million babies arrived between April 2023 and April 2026 — more than 5,000 births per day on average, or at least three…

Somalia: Ex-President Warns of Leadership Vacuum as Parliament Mandate Expires MOGADISHU, Somalia — Former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo on Tuesday said the Federal Parliament’s constitutional mandate expired on April 14, 2026, warning that Somalia is sliding into a period of "rising political uncertainty." Farmaajo said parliamentary business "can only resume after new elections are held," pushing back against a one-year extension announced by the leadership of the House of the People. His intervention gives…

Tuesday April 14, 2026 Mogadishu (AX) — Somali national forces, working alongside regional security units and international partners, killed 27 al-Shabab fighters in a major offensive across the Middle and Lower Juba regions, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. According to the ministry, the strikes focused on militant positions in areas under the districts of Jilib, Hagar and Afmadow as ground troops pressed forward against the al-Qaida-linked group. “During the course of these ground operations, airstrikes supported by…

A corruption case involving Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, has escalated sharply after a court formally charged her following a criminal investigation that has stretched on for years, according to a judicial ruling. The inquiry is among several corruption cases touching the Socialist prime minister’s inner circle, including relatives and former close allies, and it has intensified pressure on his fragile minority coalition government. Judge Juan Carlos Peinado launched the investigation in April…