By Ali Musa Abdi
Mogadishu, June 2, 2006 (AFP) – At least 11 people were killed and dozens wounded on Friday as fighters with a US-backed warlord alliance battled suspected Islamic gunmen outside the lawless Somali capital, witnesses said.
Residents said the fighting involved gunmen loyal to warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow, a leading member of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) and those of a former ally-turned-rival, Moalim Ashi.
“The alliance killed nine rival fighters belonging to Ashi and lost two,” said one resident, who saw the engagement unfold but declined to give his name for security concerns.
The new fatalities brought to at least 89 the death toll from the latest round of fighting between the two sides that began last week and have seen the Islamists make steady gains in territory.
Gunmen loyal to Mogadishu’s 11 Islamic courts have moved into Balad over the past several days to cut off the alliance’s key supply route to the town of Jowhar, about 90km north of the capital.
Mogadishu proper was tense but relatively calm on Friday, although the two sides were reinforcing positions even as elders scurried to secure an elusive ceasefire.
“We are contacting both sides involved in the conflict and they say they want peace, but to the contrary, the commanders are preparing themselves for war,” said mediator Ali Hassan.
“If this dangerous trend continues, Mogadishu will be very bad and the situation will get out of control,” he told AFP.
Witnesses said the factions deployed hundreds of reinforcements and scores of machine gun-mounted pick-ups in volatile areas in and around northern and southern Mogadishu, where the most intense violence has been centred.
And, there were fears that Muslim calls for mass anti-alliance and anti-US demonstrations after Friday’s prayers could spark fresh clashes, they said.
The new fatalities in Balad brought the death toll from three months of battles to 327 with more than 1 500 wounded, many of them civilians, and on Friday the two sides traded blame for the violence.
The ARPCT was set up in February with US support to curb the growing influence of Mogadishu’s 11 Islamic courts and track down extremists and foreign fighters, including Al-Qaeda members, they are allegedly harbouring.
The courts, which have declared a holy war against the alliance, deny the accusations and claim the warlords are fighting for the “enemy of Islam.”
“We are loved by the community, but we are also under constant attack by uncouth elements paid by the enemy of Islam,” said a senior Islamist official. But ARPCT spokesperson Hussein Gutale Raghe blamed the courts for starting the fighting in a bid to impose Sharia law across the war-shattered nation.
“The Islamic court leaders who started this fighting, represent nobody in Somalia,” he said. “They are funded and supported by foreign fighters. They are not spreading the message of Allah, but a message of hatred.”
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since 1991 and its largely powerless transitional government has blamed both the alliance and the United States for the fighting.
The United States denies responsibility for the clashes although it has refused to confirm or deny its support for the ARPCT.
But US officials and informed Somali sources have told AFP that Washington has given money to the ARPCT, one of several groups it is working with to curb what it says is a growing threat from radical Islamists in Somalia.
Source: AFP, June 2, 2006
