Tuesday, July 11, 2006; 6:54 AM
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Hundreds of fighters who were battling Somalia’s Islamic militia in the capital surrendered early Tuesday after a surge of violence that killed more than 70 people and wounded 150 since Sunday, officials said.
The fighters, loyal to secular warlord Abdi Awale Qaybdiid, turned over their arms and pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons to the Islamic militia, top Islamic commanders said. The whereabouts of Qaybdiid were not immediately clear.
  Islamic Court’s militia on a truck with an anti aircraft gun at a checkpoint during fighting in Mogadishu, Sunday July 9, 2006. Islamic militia fighters on Sunday attacked an enclave of rival clan militiamen supporting a secular warlord who refused to disarm, witnesses and officials said, as the Islamists consolidate their control of the Somali capital. At least 11 people were killed and 16 wounded in the battle between fighters loyal to the Supreme Islamic Courts Council and those from the Sa’ad sub-clan, in the southern Dharkinley District, witnesses and doctors said. (AP Photo/Mohamed Sheikh Nor) (Mohamed Sheikh Nor – AP) |
“They were holed up inside buildings and we were pounding them with heavy artillery and mortars from every corner,” said Abdi Shakur, an Islamic fighter. “They had no option but to surrender.”
The Islamic militia wrested Mogadishu from a U.S.-backed secular alliance of warlords last month, but Qaybdiid had refused to disarm.
The new violence started Sunday and broke weeks of relative calm under the rule of the Islamic fighters, who have grown increasingly radical since seizing Mogadishu and establishing strict courts based on the Quran. Mortar shells and gunfire shook the city for two days, sending residents into homes and shops or fleeing Mogadishu altogether.
More than 70 people were killed, most of them combatants, according to doctors and hospital officials. The 150 wounded appeared to be mostly civilians, doctors said.
“The war was inevitable because nobody can have authority in the city beyond the Islamic courts,” Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a top Islamic official, said Monday.
The city was quiet after Tuesday’s surrender, and public transportation was running again. Members of the Islamic militia went house to house searching for any weapons that Qaybdiid’s fighters might have hidden.
Somalia has been without an effective government since warlords overthrew its longtime dictator in 1991 and divided the nation into fiefdoms. The Islamic fundamentalists have stepped into the vacuum as an alternative military and political power.
U.S. officials cooperated with the warlords, hoping to capture three al-Qaida leaders allegedly protected by the Islamic council who are accused in the deadly 1998 bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But the Islamists prevailed, taking the U.S. by surprise and further marginalizing the country’s interim government. The interim body was established with the help of the United Nations but is powerless outside its base in Baidoa, 90 miles from Mogadishu.
The militia has forbidden movies, television and music. Last week, militiamen in central Somalia fatally shot two people at the screening of a World Cup soccer broadcast banned because it violated the fighters’ strict interpretation of Islamic law. They also broke up a wedding because it featured a band, and men and women socializing together.
Source: AP, July 11, 2006
