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Islamists vow no surrender to Somali govt and Ethiopia
A senior Somali Islamist leader on Friday vowed his fighters will never surrender to Ethiopians and the government and warned of guerrilla ambushes on the allied forces. You think that Islamic courts have failed and the Ethiopian invaders have won in Somalia? I tell within days everything will be changed, commander Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal told AFP, a day after the Islamists left the capital Mogadishu. We will never surrender to Ethiopians and the government of (President) Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, he told AFP from Kismayo, the Islamist last stronghold town about 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of Mogadishu.Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies took control of the former US embassy building in Mogadishu on Friday, tightening their hold on the capital after Islamist rivals fled. Ethiopian troops and government soldiers have settled in the compound of the former US embassy. I can see more than 30 Russian-made military trucks, said Abdi Hassan, one of hundreds of local residents gathered outside the former US mission. The embassy compound, in a western neighbourhood of the coastal city, was abandoned more than a decade ago after US forces made a humiliating retreat from Somalia following an ill-fated mission depicted in the film Black Hawk Down. Government forces took effective control of Mogadishu on Thursday after a 10-day offensive with Ethiopian allies to reclaim much of the territory seized by the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) since June. Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamad Gedi said parliament would vote to declare martial law to maintain control of a country which has been without an effective central government since the 1991 overthrow of a dictator. Posted by: Fred 2006-12-30 |
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