According to military experts, the armed melitia who are hiding inside the town, have greatly reduced their firing since yesterday afternoon. There are two reasons for this. 1. They are running low in ammunitions. 2. They are digging in defensive posture, rather than their offensive posture in the last few days. Laascaanood area is now a military only zone. No vehicles are allowed to enter the town, but vehicles are allowed to leave and checked thoroughly. Any prisoner caught who are recognised as being from Puntland will not be returned to Puntland as previously done, as Puntland has stated that they are not taking part. The same goes for other PoWs from Somali State or elswhere. They will forever be held in captivity in Somaliland.

The town of Laascaanood sits on roughly 5km by 5km sq, not hugely big in the grand scheme of things. It is probably a midsized town.

Better late than never. Dowladda dhexe should have done this from the first day. The resilience of Reer Laascaanood markuu arkay ayuu Xasan Sh. isbadalay, meesha dabeesha awooda bsdan u socoto ayuu arkay.

First of all, Somaliland Army is not the one on the offensive at the moment. It is the misguided militias that were told to fight Somaliland that has been attacking without any success in the last 3 days. Secondly, Somaliland is open to talks, the other side is not. So the stragety at the moment are two pronged: 1. To force the Garaads to come to the table, this is so far the strategy that Somaliland has taken with minimum force applied to the city. 2. To eventually go into the city and clean up the mess, and at the same time open talks with those who want to talk. In this later strategy, the talks will not have significant as the first option. Laascanood is not going anywhere but Somaliland. There is enough force available on all sides to completely flatten it, but we are not. We will take the most sensible option to get to the goals.