■ SOMALIA: Ethiopian suspends Hargeisa, Berbera flights over impasse with Somaliland government.

Ethiopian Airlines (ET) has suspended its services to the Somalian towns of Berbera and Hargeisa owing to sub-standard infrastructure. Flights between Addis Ababa and the capital of Somaliland, Hargeisa, were only recently resumed after significant upgrade works to the airport's infrastructure. However, it has since emerged that the quality of work done to runway 06/24 has allegedly proven substandard resulting in Ethiopian suspending its flights.

■ SOMALIA: Somaliland reopens Hargeisa International Airport following runway works.

Egal International Airport, the airport that serves Hargeisa, the capital of the self-proclaimed autonomous region of Somaliland, has reopened following the successful completion of USD4.6million in renovation and upgrade work to its runway, aprons and taxiways.

■ SOMALIA: Somaliland lifts UN flights ban after Turkish brokered talks resolve impasse with Mogadishu.

Turkey has successfully brokered an agreement following talks between the autonomous, yet internationally unrecognised, state of Somaliland and Somalia in which United Nations aircraft will once more be allowed to resume transiting Somaliland airspace and airports, effective July 15. Mr Mahmoud Abdi Hashi, Somaliland's Minister of Civil Aviation and Air Transport, made the announcement in Hargeisa.

■ SOMALIA: Government assumes control of its airspace from CACAS as Somaliland bans all UN flights in retaliation.

Somalia's Minister for Information, Abdullahi Elmoge Hersi, says his government has once more resumed control of its national airspace after twenty years following a handing over ceremony held at Mogadishu's Aden Adde International Airport with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) who collectively form the Civil Aviation Caretaker Authority for Somalia (CACAS).

► SOMALIA: Turkish Airlines to start flights to Somaliland in June?

Following recent talks held in Turkish capital, Ankara, between Turkish Government officials and a delegation from Somaliland, an unrecognised, self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia, flights between Istanbul and Berbera, a port town on the Red Sea, are to begin later this year.