MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Hours of fierce fighting between government troops and militias that killed dozens of combatants in Somalia’s southwestern city of Baidoa also left at least four civilians dead and 98 others wounded, a hospital official said Tuesday.
The fighting erupted early Monday when militia groups attacked government positions on the outskirts of the city, which is home to more than half a million people displaced by conflict and drought. Somali officials said at least 30 attackers were killed, but did not immediately give a toll for government troops.
Click to Gallery
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Government troops check the bodies of militia members following clashes in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Dr. Abdikafi Omar Mohamud, head of the emergencies department at Bay Regional Hospital in Baidoa, said the fighting also killed at least four civilians and injured 98, including 28 women and an elderly man hit by stray bullets.
The latest violence placed additional pressure on health services already struggling to serve residents and displacement camps in Baidoa, about 245 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Mogadishu.
Mohamud's hospital had only 40 beds available and put up an emergency tent to accommodate the influx after the fighting erupted. Medical workers were also struggling with shortages of essential medicines, he said.
Calm returned to Baidoa on Tuesday as security forces patrolled major streets and inspected buildings and vehicles damaged in the fighting. Residents cautiously emerged from their homes, although troops maintained a heavy presence in key areas.
The violence began shortly after 5 a.m. on Monday with two explosions near a military base east of Baidoa. Heavy fighting broke out minutes later around another base in Bonkay, south of the city, before armed men entered Baidoa and exchanged fire with government troops.
Fighters loyal to former South West state President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen displaced the new administration’s troops from parts of Baidoa for about six hours before being driven from the city, said Samira Gaid, a regional security analyst at Balqiis Insights.
In separate attacks, fighters of the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab struck two Somali military positions on Baidoa’s outskirts, Gaid said. The timing of the assaults prompted allegations that the extremist group had coordinated with Laftagareen’s forces.
Somalia’s federal government said the attackers included Laftagareen-aligned militias and fighters from al-Shabab. The government said its forces killed nearly 30 attackers and captured several others. South West state authorities reported a higher toll, saying about 50 attackers were killed.
Neither figure could be independently verified, and authorities did not explain the discrepancy.
South West Internal Security Minister Isak Mohamed Korsaar said Tuesday that government troops recovered the bodies of al-Shabab fighters and captured others alive.
“The militias that attacked us were not alone,” Korsaar told reporters. “We have confirmed that they were accompanied by al-Shabab.”
The fighting followed months of tension over South West’s leadership and its electoral process. The federal government rejected Laftagareen’s disputed indirect re-election in March.
Federal troops took control of Baidoa on March 30, prompting Laftagareen, who had governed South West since 2018, to announce his resignation.
Gaid warned that the fighting demonstrated how political disputes can create openings for extremist groups.
“When elite disputes are settled militarily, they create the conditions that the terrorist group exploits,” she said. “It is Somali civilians who pay for it.”
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Government troops check the bodies of militia members following clashes in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
Government troops patrol alongside government officials after clashes with militias that killed dozens of people, including civilians, in Baidoa, Somalia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces launched one of their biggest drone attacks on Russia since Moscow’s invasion over four years ago, firing almost 800 drones only two days after a similar salvo, officials said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a Russian missile strike on a village in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed at least 10 people and wounded 17 others as the barrage demolished homes, officials said.
The countries are locked in an escalating duel of long-range aerial strikes. Fighting on the roughly 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine is restricted by large numbers of drones and ground robots threatening troop movements, and neither side is making significant battlefield progress, analysts say.
In the past year, Ukraine has devised and deployed domestically produced long-range drones for strikes deep inside Russia. Its drone technology has impressed governments and defense manufacturers around the world.
Officials in Kyiv aim to make the Russian public feel the war’s consequences and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace settlement. Putin has so far shown no sign he intends to stop the invasion.
“Putin continues to drag out the war instead of accepting Ukraine’s realistic ceasefire proposals and ending the bloodshed,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
Russian air defenses overnight intercepted 791 Ukrainian drones over a number of regions, as well as annexed Crimea and the Black and the Azov seas, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said, in what was the second-largest drone attack since January 2025, according to an Associated Press tally.
More than 600 Ukrainian drones flew toward the Moscow region, where 180 were shot down, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said without elaborating.
Officials reported no deaths or major damage. Ukraine has increasingly launched swarms of hundreds of drones to try to overwhelm Russian air defenses.
In the region that surrounds the capital, three people were wounded, Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said.
Three people were also wounded in the adjacent Ryazan region where three private houses were damaged, Gov. Pavel Malkov said.
The overnight attack started a fire at a warehouse of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, in an industrial zone. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the company, which it says helps supply the Russian military, an allegation Moscow denies.
Wildberries said its facility sustained “insignificant damage.”
Coverage of the attack in state and Kremlin-backed Russian media was mostly muted, as is often the case. Russia’s main TV channels — state-run Russia 1 and Channel One — did not mention the attack at all in their morning news bulletins.
But Russian state news agency RIA Novosti featured it among the main news on its website’s homepage, describing it as “one of the most large-scale attacks on Moscow since the beginning of the summer.”
State newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on its website prominently featured a roundup of what Moscow regional Gov. Andrei Vorobyov reported about the attack, describing it as “massive” in the headline. Pro-Kremlin tabloid MK featured a news brief about it on its home page.
A Russian missile strike on the village of Pechenihy in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed 10 civilians, according to preliminary information, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.
Another 17 people were wounded, he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “a brutal attack” that damaged 10 homes, a cafe, a post office, a store and at least seven vehicles, according to Syniehubov.
“We will definitely respond to this Russian strike,” he said on social media.
Also, three people were killed and three others were wounded over the past day in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Sumy region, Ukraine’s National Police said.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office last month, said the U.K. will continue to stand by Ukraine after Russia said that Kyiv’s reported use of British drones for attacks on Russian soil would bring unidentified consequences.
“We are providing support so that Ukraine can defend itself, and that’s been the British position all the way through this conflict by previous prime ministers," Burnham said. “It remains the case with me.”
British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that two U.K. companies made drones used by Ukraine to hit Russia.
Following the report, the Russian Embassy in the U.K. said in a statement that “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian state TV that Moscow has the right to view British involvement in strikes on Russian territory as “participation in the war, with all the ensuing consequences.”
Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Brian Melley in London contributed.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
A street cleaner observes a daily nationwide minute of silence in memory of soldiers killed in the war with Russia, in Kyiv, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - In this photo, provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, rescuers carry a body that they removed from under the rubble of a private house following a Russian air attack in Pechenihy, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
A street cleaner observes a daily nationwide minute of silence in memory of soldiers killed in the war with Russia, in Kyiv, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
In this photo, provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, fire is seen on the site of a Russian air attack in Pechenihy, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo, provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, rescuers carry a body that they removed from under the rubble of a private house following a Russian air attack in Pechenihy, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov's official telegram channel, flame and smoke rise from a construction site after a Ukrainian drone attack in an undisclosed area in the Moscow region, Russia, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov's office via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, fire is seen on the site of a Russian air attack in Pechenihy, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
