28/05/08 (B449-B) ALL Africa avec Shabelle Network / Somalie : des milices s’emparent de l’Université dans une ville du sud / Somalia: Armed Militias Seize University in Southern Town (En Anglais – Info lecteur)

Armed with propelled grenades and machine guns militia men have captured the main university building in Kismayu town the provincial capital of middle Shabelle region on Tuesday night according to the teachers of the campus.

The armed men were reported to have evicted the students and teachers from the college and deeply entered in.

One of the university’s lecturers Mohamed Ahmed Warsame has declared that the militias have seized some of the university’s teaching tools.

« They rejected to leave in the university’ they wreaked with shatters into the cabinet of the university’s books » Warsame said.

It’s yet unknown the motive behind the seizure of the university by unknown groups.

In Somalia, over a decade of conflict has meant two generations of young people missing out on education – with devastating consequences for development. Yet 1,150 primary schools are now up and running with new books and a national curriculum.

Somalia is one of the toughest places in the world to be a child. But on one issue there is clear consensus: Somali communities desperately want their children to go to school – and that means girls as well as boys after the Siad Barre government collapsed in 1991. But recently its people have again rebuilt their elegant wooden houses, and now they are rebuilding their school – out of stone, so that it will last.