# Puntland raid finds foreign passport and bank cards as displacement mounts in ISIS campaign
Idil News reported that forces raided a hideout in the Bari mountains and that more than 6,500 families have been displaced by the offensive.
Event date 2025-01-16. Puntland forces claimed a significant success in their campaign against Islamic State militants in the Bari mountains, with Idil News reporting that a raid on a hideout turned up passports, bank cards and other evidence that the group's networks were not purely local.
According to the report, the hideout was built around rough stone caves used as a hub for ISIS activity. Among the items found were Egyptian and Saudi passports and international bank cards. Idil News said one passport belonged to Al-Hawshani Mohamed Ahmed, a 21-year-old Saudi national, and showed an entry into Somalia through Addis Ababa on Dec. 18, 2024. That is the kind of detail that, if accurate, points to a cross-border route into the conflict zone.
The report also said Puntland forces destroyed supply depots, fuel storage and makeshift garages used to assemble explosives and maintain vehicles. Those are the unglamorous but critical pieces of militant infrastructure. They keep fighters moving, armed and supplied. Disrupting them is often more important than seizing a single outpost because it limits how a group can operate after a raid ends.
The humanitarian side of the story is just as significant. Idil News said Puntland's offensive against ISIS in the Al-Miskad mountains had displaced more than 6,500 families from villages in Bari and Sanaag. It said 754 students were among the displaced and that villages such as Dasaan, Dhaadaar and Xankookib were empty as families moved toward Qandala and Bosaso.
Those figures were attributed in the report to the Masaf Institute, and the piece said Puntland's cabinet had urged the international community, aid groups and the United Nations to provide support for areas newly cleared from militant control. That leaves the reader with two linked realities: a military campaign that says it is finding and breaking militant infrastructure, and a civilian population that is paying the price in displacement, interrupted schooling and damaged livelihoods.
Because the supplied evidence comes from a single outlet, the safest report keeps the attribution clear. The raid, the passports, the bank cards and the displacement figures are what Idil News said it had learned from the operation. The broader verified takeaway is that Puntland's ISIS campaign is now about more than front lines. It is also about tracing movement, cutting supply chains and coping with the humanitarian fallout.
