July 11 (Xinhua) – African leaders on Monday appealed for calm in Somalia, urging warring parties to exercise restrain as death toll from renewed clashes between militias of the Somali Islamic courts and gunmen loyal to the only remaining warlord rose to about 60.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, expressed concern at the deteriorating insecurity in the Horn of African nation and urged the parties to resolve their difference through dialogue.
In a joint statement issued following a day-long meeting in Nairobi, Kibaki and Museveni called on the international community to back current efforts by regional States aimed at bringing normalcy in the war torn nation.
“President Mwai Kibaki briefed President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on the current situation obtaining in Somalia. Their Excellencies expressed their concern at the deteriorating situation in Somalia. Both leaders urged the parties to resolve the conflict without resorting to violence,” the statement issued in Nairobi said.
The Ugandan leader arrived in Nairobi for a one-day visit to Kenya where they discussed regional economic and political issues.
Eyewitnesses said heavy fighting erupted in Somali capital Mogadishu and claimed about 20 lives on Monday.
Sources said the dead included six militiamen loyal to the warlord Adbi Hassan Awale Qeybdid, five from the Islamic courts as rival sides staged deadly artillery duels in southern Mogadishu.
The fresh violence comes a day after clashes in which at least 21 people died and some 40 were injured.
Qeybdid is the last of the warlords defeated by the Islamists still in Mogadishu.
According to sources, seven other people were killed in the K4 and K5 neighborhoods after they were hit by stray rounds of fire as both sides crushed each other with artillery, mortar and rocket fire in the battlefield around 6-Piano and Mogadishu Gaheyr University, bringing the death toll to about 60 after fighting erupted on Sunday.
Earlier, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi accused the Islamists within the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) of breaking a ceasefire negotiated in Sudan last month.
The prime minister said the largely powerless transitional government would not negotiate with some leading members of the Islamic courts, branding them terrorists.
Gedi, whose government is expected to meet the leaders of the Islamic courts in Sudanese capital on July 15, said he would only hold talks with moderate groups and civil society.
He also urged the UN Security Council to lift its arms embargo on Somalia.
The Somali prime minister said the weak, UN-backed government needed to be able to buy weapons and restore security in the country, which has not had an effective national government for 15 years.
“We want to re-establish our national security services, ” he reportedly said.
The fighting, which started in the K6 area and the district of Medina, south and southwest of Mogadishu, was the second such incident between the SCIC and Qeybdid’s militia.
Qeybdid was a member of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism, which were defeated by the Islamists on June 5 and driven out of the capital, Mogadishu.
Since fighting first erupted last February, at least 420 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded.
Islamic courts are attempting to impose strict sharia (Islamic) law over areas in their control, which include Mogadishu and much of country’s south.
Source: Xinhua, July 11, 2006
