Eritrean state radio reports that fifty-three weyane (Ethiopian) soldiers, including officers, have defected to Eritrea over the last few months. The soldiers are said to include three lieutenants, a second lieutenant, a sergeant, four corporals and 14 lance-corporals, who all object to Ethiopia's Somalia intervention and the regime's ethnic favoritism. Eighteen of the defectors are said to be ethnic Oromo, 15 Tigrayans, 15 Amhara and the remainder from the Gurage and southern Ethiopian peoples. The Ethiopian regime is dominated by members of the Tigray ethnic group. (Voice of the Broad Masses of Eritrea, Asmara, in Tigrinya, via BBC Monitoring, June 11) Ethiopian state television, in turn, reports that a small guerilla group in the pay of sha'biyyah (Eritrea's ruling party) operating in Teru District in Ethiopia's northeastern Afar Region has surrendered peacefully to government forces. (Ethiopian TV, Addis Ababa, in Amharic, via BBC Monitoring, June 21)

The UN has now vindicated the recent findings of a British study on the roots of the Darfur conflict. From Guardian Newspapers, June 25:

LONDON — The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and environmental degradation, which threaten to trigger a succession of wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the damage, according to a U.N. report.

Somali police fired on a crowd of people trying to storm a food warehouse in Mogadishu June 25, killing five civilians, witnesses reported. Hundreds of people had gathered at a police station that was serving as a food distribution center, said Halima Mudey, who was in the crowd. "People were waiting for the distribution of the food, but some of them tried to storm and steal the maize and cooking oil, then police opened fire and killed five people including my brother," Abdiqadir Mohamed Ilbir said as he wept. He said his brother was shot and killed by the police. Mudey also said five people were killed. (AP, June 25)

Geeska Afrika reports June 22 that US warplanes based in Djbouti are overflying Somalia's northern autonomous enclave of Puntland in preparation for air-strikes against suspected al-Qaeda fugitives. The report also states that three weeks earlier, on June 2, a US Navy warship shelled the Puntland coastal town of Bargal, killing at least 12 Islamist fighters—with little note from the world media.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) has welcomed a decision by the Mauritanian government to allow some 20,000 refugees to return from neighboring Mali and Senegal, where they have spent almost two decades in exile. The Mauritanian decision was announced on World Refugee Day, June 20.

At least eight people, including three children, died in Mogadishu in clashes between insurgents and Somalian interim government and Ethiopian occupation forces June 20. One of the dead was a Somalian police officer killed in an attack on a military camp. Hours earlier, seven were killed when Ethiopian soldiers opened fire after a roadside bomb exploded near one of their two passing trucks, residents said. Resident Adan Hussein told Reuters: "Ethiopian troops riding from the other truck started firing indiscriminately, killing three children. The children were in a house made of iron sheets." (Reuters, June 20)

International aid agency Oxfam has announced it is pulling out of Gereida, the largest camp in Darfur, where more than 130,000 have sought refuge. The agency cited inaction by local authorities from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), which controls the region, in addressing security convers and violence against aid workers. Oxfam urged the international community to do more to pressure all parties to the Darfur conflict to end attacks on civilians and aid workers.

The June 18 New York Times features a front-page above-the-fold story by Jeffrey Gettleman, "In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality"—the first significant account in the "newspaper of record" of the forgotten war on the Ogaden people (which apppears proudly on the Ogaden Online website). The lead photo features dread-locked rifle-toting guerillas of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), with whom Gettleman trudged across the desert, in an area closed to outsiders by Ethiopian government decree. He visited war-ravaged villages where residents told him account after harrowing account of government troops burning homes, killing and abducting residents, and engaging in wholesale rape and torture with impunity.