MOGADISHU, Somalia
Commercial flights to Somalia’s South West state resumed Tuesday after a nearly two-week suspension that began on March 18.
The resumption comes a day after Somali federal forces secured full control of the administrative capital Baidoa.
A commercial plane carrying presidential guards landed at Baidoa’s Shati Gaduud airport early Tuesday, ahead of a high-level delegation led by Speaker of the Somali Parliament Aadan Madobe. Federal officials are set to begin a new political transition following the federal forces’ takeover of the state capital, which prompted the resignation of state president Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen.
Adan Maalim Ibrahim, a local air travel agent in Baidoa, told Anadolu by phone that bookings began the previous night and that operations at the city’s airport, one of the busiest in the country, had resumed.
The state, which had been at odds with the federal government over Laftagareen’s mandate and the country’s constitutional overhaul by the federal parliament, suspended commercial flights on March 18, allowing only UN and AU flights for humanitarian purposes.
