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| Africa Horn |
| Battle for Mogadishu escalates |
| 2006-05-10 |
| Rival militias using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and assault rifles battled for control of a part of the Somali capital for a third day running yesterday in fighting that has killed more than 60 people and wounded nearly 100 since Sunday. The clashes between radical Islamic militiamen and secular rivals mark a sharp escalation among combatants who usually do not fight after dusk. Witnesses and hospital officials said the fighting had killed nine people overnight, 35 on Monday and 18 on Sunday. One witness, Sheik Abdulahi Ali Guled, said a mortar shell had landed on a home containing seven members of a family, killing six people overnight. Another mortar round had killed an Islamic cleric and two other people, said Tahliil Olad, who witnessed the incident. On Monday, the dead included a 6-month-old baby and three family members who were killed by a mortar. The secular Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism militia and the Islamic Court Union militia have been squaring off for several weeks to stake out strategic positions in preparation for a larger battle for control of Mogadishu. The alliance accuses the rival Islamic militia of sheltering foreign Al-Qaeda leaders, and the courts accuse the alliance of being pawns of the United States. Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, when warlords ousted longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other - carving the nation of about eight million people into a patchwork of anarchic, clan-based fiefdoms. A UN-backed transitional government has based itself in the central city of Baidoa, but has so far failed to assert itself elsewhere in the country. Witnesses said the latest fighting had begun when gunmen working for a militia commander linked to the alliance had opened fire on a gun truck carrying the bodyguards of Islamic Court Union Chairman Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed. Members of the alliance, however, said they had only been defending themselves from an attack by radical militiamen. Ahmed vowed in a radio interview that Islamic militias would continue fighting until they got the upper hand over their rivals. Before the start of the latest fighting, at least 120 people had been killed and 70 more wounded since March in similar clashes between the alliance and the Islamic courts. Traditional elders and local chiefs have tried unsuccessfully to organise peaceful negotiations. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 On Monday, the dead included a 6-month-old baby and three family members who were killed by a mortar Al Ghamdis? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-10 16:23 |
| #1 Witnesses said the latest fighting had begun when gunmen working for a militia commander linked to the alliance had opened fire on a gun truck carrying the bodyguards of Islamic Court Union Chairman Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed. "Truce? What Truce? That's not a truce, kuffir. It's a HUDNA." |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-05-10 15:10 |