Saturday, May 13, 2006
MOGADISHU (AFP) – Warlords deployed hundreds of fighters in the Somali capital to battle rivals from the Islamic courts as heavy artillery, rocket and mortar fire pounded the blood-soaked city for the seventh day, leaving more than 100 people dead, witnesses said.
Two regional warlords joined their US-backed colleagues in the capital, deploying heavily-armed militiamen and dozens of battlewagons, to stoke fierce urban fighting that has spilled from its initial confines in northern Mogadishu to the south.
Alarmed, Somalia’s powerless transitional government asked the western powers to squeeze a truce from the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) and the influential Union of Islamic courts.
“We are not calling for foreign troops to come in and stop the violence in Mogadishu, but urging the international community to exert more pressure on the warring sides to urgently stop the violence,” Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayir told AFP from Baidoa, about 250 kilometres (150 miles) west of the capital.
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Residents of Mogadishu seek refuge in a primary school in Somalia’s war ravaged capital on 11 May 2006. Warlords deployed hundreds of fighters in the Somali capital to battle rivals from the Islamic courts as heavy artillery, rocket and mortar fire pounded the blood-soaked city for the seventh day, leaving more than 100 people dead, witnesses said.(AFP/File) |
Saturday’s pitched battles killed at least 11 people in the northern district of Sisi, bringing the death toll to at least 111 since the rival warriors started high-powered duels on last Sunday.
Militia chiefs Abdi Hassan Quybdid and Mohamed Dheere brought hundreds of fighters from their respective strongholds outside Mogadishu to help dismantle tough defences erected by hardline Islamic clerics accused of hosting Al-Qaeda extremists and foreign fighters.
“This is the time to save the people of Mogadishu and stop the bloodshed,” said Ahmed Muhamoud, a top commander in the Quybdid militia.
Thousands of terrified civilians continued fleeing the battle zones of Sisi, Waharaade, Huriwa and Yaqshid districts in north and south Mogadishu, while others reported dozens of non-combatants still unaccounted for, perhaps explaining the wild casualty figures.
Medical sources said at least 250 people have been wounded.
“The warring sides are not targeting civilians directly, but most people are killed by stray bullets, mortars or heavy machine guns coming into their shanty houses, penetrating the poorly constructed walls,” said Mohamed Hirsi, an elderly man who fled from Sisi.
Accounts of the death toll have varied widely, with the spokesman for the alliance, Hussein Gutale Raghe, estimating that at least 150 people may have been killed, but there was no way to independently verify the figures.
Longtime Mogadishu residents said militiamen buried the dead at night to avoid revealing losses.
At least 70 percent of the population in the worst affected districts are believed to have fled their homes under intense machine gun, rocket and mortar fire that has rained down on residential areas causing indiscriminate damage.
The death toll has now surpassed that from an earlier wave of unrest over three days in February and four days in March when at least 85 people were killed as the two factions fought each other.
Those incidents had been the bloodiest clashes in the capital since Somalia collapsed into anarchy 15 years ago.
The fighting has continued despite appeals for calm by the United Nations , United States and Somalia’s largely powerless transitional government, currently based in Baidoa.
Their appeals and a truce offer from the Islamic clerics who control the militia have been dismissed by the ARPCT.
“I am appealing and begging the warring sides in Mogadishu to show a sense of humanity and stop the war,” influential Somali parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden told reporters in Nairobi.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa Saturday expressed regret over the bloodshed in member state Somalia and labelled the rival warlords as “terrorists”.
“The only solution to the current stalemate in Somalia is to support the democratically chosen government and help it consolidate its role and strike with an iron fist anyone who wants to return Somalia to war,” Mussa said.
The ARPCT alliance has vowed to curb the power of the courts that have gained popular backing by restoring some stability to areas in Mogadishu they control through the imposition of Sharia law.
It also accuses the courts of harboring terrorists and training foreign fighters on Somali soil, charges that Islamic leaders deny but that are also leveled by the US and other Western nations.
Although Washington has not explicitly confirmed its support for the alliance, US officials have told AFP the group has received US money and is one of several it is working with to contain the threat of Islamic radicals.
Source: AFP, May 13, 2006
