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Somali rebel leader denies reports he has been injured
 [Beirut Daily Star: Region] A Somali Islamist rebel leader on US and UN terrorism lists denied on Monday reports that he had been seriously wounded in fighting between rival Islamist groups in the Horn of Africa nation. "You see that I am physically healthy and fit. No injuries at all. That is propaganda spread by the enemy when they were defeated in the recent fighting in central Somalia," Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told Reuters in Mogadishu.A family member and a militia opposed to Aweys and his Islamist insurgent group Hizb al-Islam said on Sunday the rebel leader he had been seriously wounded, or killed. Aweys also said that the violence that has killed more than 200 people since last month is "compulsory." "We have a right to defend ourselves," Aweys said at a conference in Mogadishu, the bullet-scarred capital of Somalia. "It is compulsory for us to keep on fighting" until African Union troops withdraw from Somalia, he said. Aweys, who Western security services say is close to Al-Qaeda, is a father figure to the insurgents in Somalia, where he has headed various Islamist groups since the 1990s. An Islamist insurgency since early 2007, the latest cycle in 19 years of conflict in the Horn of Africa nation, has killed around 18,000 civilians and thousands more fighters. It has also drawn foreign jihadists into Somalia, enabled piracy to flourish offshore and unsettled the whole of East Africa, with neighbors Kenya and Ethiopia on high alert. The government-allied moderate Islamist militia Ahla Sunna Waljamaca said its fighters shot Aweys during battles in Wabho town on Friday, and that he died of wounds later. There were also rumors among militia fighters that another rebel leader, Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki, was among the 123 combatants who died in the fighting around Wabho. In separate news, a senior government official said Monday that Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmad will not attend a conference in Rome. Ahmad had been expected in Italy on Tuesday for a meeting of the International Contact Group on Somalia, but he opted to stay in Mogadishu where a month-old insurgent offensive aimed at toppling the government was yet to be decisively repelled. "The Somali president, Sharif Sheikh Ahmad, will not attend the conference by the International Contact Group on Somalia for important duties at home," the senior official said on condition of anonymity. "The meeting will be attended by the prime minister [Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke] and several other ministers," he said. "Our president is very much engaged in dealing with the current security situation created by anti-establishment forces that are opposed to peace." Some members of the president's entourage had warned that his absence from Mogadishu risked creating a window for Aweys and his insurgent allies to make a final push and seize the presidency. Posted by: Fred 2009-06-09 |
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