Renewed clashes erupt in southwestern Somalia between government and militias

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Renewed fighting erupted early Thursday between government forces and militias on the outskirts of Somalia’s southwestern city of Baidoa, with reports of heavy gunfire and civilians fleeing their homes.

Somalia’s Defense Ministry said government forces responded to an attack by fighters loyal to former South West state President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen and the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab.

The clashes are the latest escalation in a political and security dispute between Somalia’s federal government and Laftagareen over control of South West state. Federal forces took control of Baidoa on March 30, after which Laftagareen resigned. He had governed the state since 2018.

Clashes stopped in the early afternoon, but there was no official information on casualties or the extent of the fighting. Government troops patrolled the streets, ambulances rushed to the victims, and residents ventured out assessing damage and clearing out bloodied clothes from the pavement.

Dr. Abdikafi Omar Mohamud, head of the emergency department at Bay Regional Hospital in Baidoa, told The Associated Press that 24 wounded and one dead civilian were received by his staff.

Abdullahi Haji, a Baidoa resident, told AP over the phone that he left his home as soon as he heard heavy gunfire and stray bullets landing in residential areas.

Baidoa, about 245 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, is a major humanitarian hub and hosts more than half a million people displaced by conflict and drought.

Last month, fighting in and around Baidoa left at least four civilians dead and 98 others wounded.

Associated Press writer Bishar Mayow Mukhtar in Baidoa, Somalia, contributed to this report.

In this photo taken with a smartphone, locals carry the body of a person, killed in fighting between government troops and militias in Baidoa, Somalia, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Bishar Mayow Mukhtar)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, security personnel patrol a street in Baidoa, Somalia, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Bishar Mayow Mukhtar)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, locals stand near a building riddled with bullet holes in Baidoa, Somalia, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Bishar Mayow Mukhtar)

Computer chip company Nvidia is buying artificial intelligence software platform Hugging Face for $12.93 billion.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a blog post Thursday that more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use Hugging Face to share more than 3 million models, 500,000 data sets and 1 million applications. There's also more than 200,000 companies that use the platform, he said.

In July, ChatGPT maker OpenAI said that its artificial intelligence system hacked into the data processing systems of Hugging Face, which suspected it was an AI agent autonomously acting on its own.

Nvidia will keep Hugging Face as an open platform.

“Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem. Developers will choose the models they want, the frameworks they want, the clouds and inference service providers they want and the computing platforms they want,” Huang wrote. “Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face.”

Hugging Face will still support open source and open weight models as well as multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development and deployment.

Nvidia has released more than 500 models on Hugging Face and more than 250 open datasets.

Nvidia's high-end chips have emerged as AI’s best building blocks and the Santa Clara, California-based company's quarterly results regularly blow past Wall Street's expectations.

While AI has powered stock market gains and U.S. economic growth in recent years, there’s been growing skepticism about whether AI will justify the trillions of dollars that are being spent to develop the technology.

The AI industry is also increasingly facing pushback amid objections to the expansion in data centers and fears that the speed with which AI is being adopted could lead to widespread job losses for many Americans.

Nvidia's stock rose slightly before the market open.

FILE - Jensen Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia, waits for a groundbreaking ceremony for an expansion of Coherent's manufacturing facility to begin on June 16, 2026, in Sherman, Texas. (AP Photo/Jeffrey McWhorter, File)