Police officers off to Italy for training

Police officers from around the country have left for Italy to start training, a senior Somali police officer told IRIN on Monday. The 26 officers - from various regions of the country - are in Italy for "a three-week refresher training course in police work, including anti-terrorism techniques", Colonel Muhammad Yusuf Madale, the Mogadishu police spokesman, said. The group included officers from the self-declared independent state of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, and the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, he said. This was the first time in over decade that police officers from across Somalia were participating in a joint programme, a Somali source told IRIN. "This is good for Somalia. It shows that there is still hope for Somali unity," said the source. Police officers from Baidoa (240 km southwest of Mogadishu, and under the control of the Rahanweyn Resistance Army), who were also supposed to have taken part in the training, had failed to arrive due transport hitches, a source in Baidoa told IRIN.