MOGADISHU (Somaliguardian) – Dozens of families whose sons are missing since they were secretly sent to Eritrea for a military training have taken to the streets in Somalia’s capital on Sunday, demanding that the government give an explanation on their whereabouts.
It has come several months after Somaliguardian reported that dozens of the youths who had completed clandestine military training in Eritrea were deployed as cannon fodder to the war raging in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where most of them died, though the Somali federal government has called the report “baseless”.
Police used force to disperse parents who tried to march towards the presidential palace and beaten some of them as the angry mothers and fathers of the missing recruits asked about the whereabouts of their sons.
They called on the outgoing president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo to intervene in the issue immediately.
Some of the parents speaking to media say they have not heard of the boys since they were taken to Eritrea, with many of them missing more than two years.
The families fear that their sons might have been killed in the fighting between allied Ethiopian and Eritrean troops, and Tigray defense forces.
Somalia’s former deputy intelligence chief Abdisalan Guled told media in January that hundreds of Somali youths earlier sent to train in Eritrea were killed in the conflict in Ethiopia’s north.
The government has not yet answered demands by the families whose sons are missing for years since going to Eritrea for a military training.
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