MOGADISHU — Secular fighters and Islamic extremists traded artillery and mortar fire in Somalia’s capital overnight, despite mediators’ efforts to broker a cease-fire in fighting that has left at least 122 people dead.
Most of the victims have been civilians caught in the crossfire. Mogadishu residents were fleeing Thursday amid fears the fighting will get much worse in a country that has known little but violence and chaos for more than a decade.
“The fighting continues killing our brothers and sisters in front of us, so we decided to leave the city rather than watching them in a pool of blood,” said Khasim Siidow, a father of eight children, who was on minibus to Wanlaweyn, 90 kilometres southwest of Mogadishu.
Fighting has escalated steadily since Sunday, when the extremists, who have alleged ties to al-Qaeda, tried to capture a strategic road through northern Mogadishu from the warlords, who are linked to the United States.
Both sides have been squaring off for a major battle for control of the city in recent weeks. This latest fighting appeared to be only the beginning. Militias in other parts of the city have not joined in the fighting yet, but they continue to man their defences and tensions are rising.
The battle between the Islamic Court Union and the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism has centred on the northern neighbourhood of Sii-Sii, with neither side gaining an advantage. While the alliance has held the road through Sii-Sii, the courts have controlled the neighbourhoods on either side.
Medical officials reported that 26 people died in the fighting since nightfall Wednesday. Most of the victims have been civilians caught in the crossfire. More than 200 people have been wounded in the fighting, doctors have said.
Twelve shells missed their target overnight, landing on civilian homes far from the fighting, witnesses said.
“In one event, seven people of the same family — including three children — died when a mortar hit their house in Huriwaa district,” Dayah Idiris, the victims’ neighbour, told the Associated Press.
Late Wednesday, civic leader Abdulahi Shir’wa said that neutral groups were meeting with the leaders of the two militias to try to negotiate a cease-fire.
But Abdinura Siad, an alliance militia commander, said he thought the mediators, who included businessmen, clan elders and moderate religious leaders, were biased.
“The Islamists should stop fighting, then we can stop,” he said. “We are only defending ourselves.”
Islamic Court Union chairman Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed has repeatedly promised to observe a cease-fire, but so far none has taken hold.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi called on all sides to stop fighting from his government’s headquarters in Baidoa, 240 kilometres west of Mogadishu. Though his government has UN backing, it has so far failed to assert itself outside of Baidoa.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was extremely concerned about “the consequences in humanitarian terms of the intense armed clashes currently under way in Mogadishu.”
Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, when warlords ousted long-time dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other — carving this country of an estimated eight million people into a patchwork of anarchic, clan-based fiefdoms.
Islamic fundamentalists have portrayed themselves as an alternative capable of bringing order and peace, but they have not hesitated to use force and have allegedly linked up with al-Qaeda terrorists.
Rumours abound that the United States is backing the alliance. Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said in an interview last week that he believes Washington is supporting the militia, which includes ministers in an interim cabinet, as a way of fighting several senior al-Qaeda operatives that are being protected by radical clerics. The U.S. has said only that it had met with a wide variety of Somali leaders in an effort to fight international terrorists in the country.
At the United Nations Wednesday, the Security Council urged all nations to adhere to an existing arms embargo in Somalia. But the council ignored recommendations from one of its own committees that travel bans and asset freezes be imposed against some Somali warlords.
The council also refused to address calls for two economic embargoes: one on Somali charcoal, which is environmentally destructive and enriching the warlords; and another to ban the export of fish from Somali waters, which are caught by foreign vessels that pay the warlords expensive fees.
The council committee had said Somali warlords routinely violate the current arms embargo and have enriched themselves by selling fishing licences and exporting charcoal. It also said the Islamic fundamentalists have gained the “backing and military capability to be a credible contender for power in Somalia,” the committee said.
Some UN ambassadors, however, said they would keep up pressure for targeted sanctions, saying the situation in Somalia was deteriorating.
Source: AP, May 11, 2006
