Mogadishu: Samali Violence Continues

By Sahal Abdulle

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Shells rained down on Mogadishu and a helicopter was hit in a second day of battles on Friday as Ethiopian and Somali troops sought to flush out militant Islamist insurgents in the worst fighting for months.
After around 30 people died on Thursday, terrified residents said there was no let-up in the fighting across the bullet-scarred city on the Indian Ocean coast.

“A mortar has just fallen into the house next to me. We can hear crying and can see smoke,” Faisal Jamah, a resident of south Mogadishu, said by telephone. “We barely slept last night. The sky was lit up by shelling all night.”

Ethiopian troops supporting the interim Somali government again used tanks and helicopters against the rebels.

A Reuters witness said he saw from the roof of his house two Ethiopian helicopters firing at an insurgent stronghold, before one was hit by a missile. “The sound of the engine changed, then a trail of white smoke came out as it lost altitude fast. I lost sight of it in the direction of the airport,” he said.

At least 100 people were wounded on Thursday, and the toll of deaths and injuries looked certain to rise. Smoke billowed from houses, and explosions sounded around the city.

“There are a lot of wounded, but there is no way to take them to the hospitals due to the fighting on the roads,” Jamah added as gunfire echoed around the streets on Friday morning.

With some of the clan militia who used to run the lawless city fighting alongside the Islamists, the violence has left a ceasefire between the Ethiopian military and the city’s main clan, the Hawiye, in tatters.

Analysts said Ethiopia appeared bent on an all-out push against the insurgents, who have been emboldened by recent strikes including the downing of an airplane serving an African peacekeeping mission, and the killing of various soldiers.

Local broadcaster Shabelle said machine-gun fire was echoing since dawn around the area of Mogadishu’s football stadium, where Ethiopian soldiers and insurgents had dug trenches just a few meters from each other.

“The sound of heavy artilleries could be heard in all parts of the capital city while panic-stricken civilians are still fleeing from the city,” Shabelle said on its Web site.

The private media network added that at least 30 people had died in Thursday’s fighting. Reuters verified at least 28.

RECONCILIATION?

Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said, however, that a reconciliation conference scheduled to start in mid-April was still on track. Moderate Islamists would be invited, he said.

“Those who renounce violence and recognize the Transitional Federal Charter can participate,” he told the BBC from Riyadh, referring to the charter under which his government was established in neighboring Kenya in 2004.

The mandate for the government, which was set up in the 14th attempt to restore central rule to Somalia since 1991, runs out in 2009, after which in theory there should be elections.

Gedi denied security was deteriorating even further in Mogadishu. “This is what the mass media is spreading, but the reality is different,” he said.

But reporters are witnessing ever more violent scenes.

The African Union (AU) has sent 1,200 Ugandan troops to help pacify Somalia. But they have also been attacked in a nation that defied a U.N.-U.S. peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s.

Other African nations are balking at sending further troops needed to boost the AU force to its planned strength of 8,000.

Tens of thousands of Mogadishu residents have fled the city, many piling their possessions onto donkey-carts.

Death and carnage in Somalia as rebels attacked

By Sahal Abdulle

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Helicopters and tanks pounded rebel positions across Mogadishu on Thursday as allied Ethiopian and Somali troops launched a major push to end a bloody insurgency, with at least 11 civilians reported killed.

With scenes of carnage shocking even by Mogadishu standards, residents said the final death-toll could be much higher.

“Patients are coming to us by the minute, it is too much,” one harried doctor at Madina hospital told Reuters by telephone.

Several Ethiopian helicopter gunships fired rockets, Reuters witnesses said, in the first use of aerial power in the capital during the increasingly vicious fighting of recent months.

Government and Ethiopian forces are pitted against Islamists ousted from Mogadishu over the New Year and disgruntled clan militia who used to run the lawless capital.

Amid the chaos, one mortar flew into a mosque, killing a baby boy there and beheading another teenage boy.

“My children sought refuge at a mosque when it was hit by a mortar shell. My son died and my daughter lost the toes on one of her feet,” local police officer Hashim Hussein told Reuters, his voice cracking with emotion.

Another mortar hit a fuel tank, sparking a huge blaze that engulfed a local watchman and truck owner, witnesses said.

Breaking a rocky ceasefire in place since the weekend, the Ethiopian and Somali government soldiers launched attacks from early morning on insurgents’ strongholds in the Ramadan area of north Mogadishu, around the main soccer stadium, and elsewhere.

“I have not seen anything like this,” said one terrified inhabitant, Hussein Haji. “Whenever the Ethiopians fire their big guns, all my windows and doors are shaking.”

Explosions and gunfire rattled around the streets from soon after dawn, sending residents running for cover in their homes.

“Early in the morning, the government troops and Ethiopians attacked us,” said one Islamist source involved in the fighting.

The local Shabelle broadcaster said at least 11 people, mainly civilians, had been killed by stray bullets on Thursday.

It also reported two tanks had been destroyed.

“The Ethiopian forces, who are now facing strong resistance, continue to shell,” it added. “Two helicopter gunships started bombardments in the rebel positions of the capital.”

TRUCE OVER

Reuters cameraman Farah Roble and reporter Sahal Abdulle, who could not leave their buildings due to the fighting, saw helicopters firing and smoke rising from buildings as explosions and gunfire reverberated around the coastal city.

The Ethiopians had brokered a truce at the weekend with the city’s dominant Hawiye clan after a week that saw at least two dozen people killed, soldiers’ bodies dragged in streets, and a plane crash probably due to a missile.

That fighting was the worst since the war over the New Year to kick out the Islamists and put President Abdullahi Yusuf’s interim government in the capital.

The government represents the 14th attempt at restoring central rule since the 1991 ouster of a military dictator.

The African Union (AU) has sent 1,200 Ugandan troops to help pacify Somalia. But they have also been the target of attacks in the lawless Horn of Africa nation that defied a U.N.-U.S. peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s.

Other African nations are baulking at sending further troops needed to bring the AU force up to its intended total of 8,000.

The United Nations said on Thursday that 57,000 people had fled Mogadishu since February, including 12,000 in the last week. “They are hungry and face harassment from thugs,” the U.N. refugee agency said in a statement.

Somali, Ethiopia troops fight insurgents

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somali and Ethiopian troops battled insurgents for a second day in the capital Thursday, witnesses said. There were no immediate reports of causalities.

On Wednesday, Islamic insurgents dragged soldiers’ bodies through the streets of Mogadishu during the fighting.   At least 21 people were killed in Wednesday’s violence and more than 120 were wounded, hospital officials said.

Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and heavy machine-guns and government troops responded with artillery and machine-gun fire in the early morning battles Thursday in northern and southern parts of Mogadishu, the witnesses said.

Hundreds of government troops were deployed to reinforce troops who fought insurgents Wednesday, said Fathi Mohamed Aden, a clan elder who saw the fighting take place in his northern Mogadishu neighborhood.

Both sides then engaged in a fierce gunbattle, he said.

In a southern Mogadishu neighborhood, gunmen attacked government and Ethiopian troops based at the former defense ministry building, said Jamila Isaq Roble, a mother of six.

The fighting follows Wednesday’s battles during which insurgents dragged the bodies of six soldiers — four Somalis and two of their Ethiopian allies — through the streets of Mogadishu and set the bodies on fire, drawing crowds who threw rocks and kicked the smoldering remains.

Wednesday marked some of the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu since a radical militia known as the Council of Islamic Courts was driven from the capital in December after six months in power. But the group has promised to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war, and mortar attacks pound the capital nearly every day.

The leader of the Council of Islamic Courts, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, told the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Somali service that the insurgents and residents of Mogadishu are justified in fighting the Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies, but denied he was involved in it.

Speaking in a rare interview late Wednesday since his group’s ouster, Aweys said he and other Islamic leaders are safe and living in Somalia, though he declined to disclose his location. He said that he considers African Union peacekeepers already in the country enemies.

“We were invaded and no one respected us while we were in power and were ready to negotiate. Even the  United Nations, which we expected was an impartial organization, helped the invasion against us. So we see the African troops as an enemy and not a friend,” Aweys said, speaking on a satellite phone.

Interior Minister Mohamed Mohamud Guled said that the government is determined to restore law and order in Mogadishu within a week despite any resistance it meets.

“The government will defeat the elements, who are the enemy of peace for Somalis and we will conclude that mission within a week,” Guled told The Associated Press.

A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing operation, said Wednesday’s offensive was focused on parts of the capital controlled by the Habr Gedir clan, which was a major supporter of the more radical elements of the Islamic courts and remains opposed to the government.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991. The current administration has failed to assert control throughout the country, and the African Union has deployed a small peacekeeping force to defend it.

But daily violence has continued in the capital, with civilians caught in the crossfire taking the brunt of the violence.