Saturday, May 20, 2006
ADDIS ABABA, Somalia (AFP) – The African Union has told rival armed groups in the lawless Somali capital to stop the recent clashes that have claimed scores of lives, wounded hundreds and displaced thousands more.
AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare said the days of street battles between a US-backed warlord alliance and Islamic courts’ militias threatened to scuttle regional efforts to restore a semblance of a national government in the shattered Horn of Africa nation.
Konare urged ” all parties engaged in the current hostilities to exercise restraint and refrain from any action that would further escalate the situation and endanger the efforts to promote lasting peace, security and reconciliation in Somalia,” an AU statement said Saturday.
Fighting between Mogadishu warlords and charter members of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) against forces loyal to the city’s 11 Islamic courts has claimed some 140 lives.
The ARPCT was formed in February with US backing to curb the growing influence of the courts and track down the foreign fighters and extremists, including Al-Qaeda members, they are allegedly harboring.
Since then, gunmen loyal to the alliance and to the courts have fought three major battles in which more than 200 people, mainly civilians, have died, the most recent of which lasted for eight days until Sunday.
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi’s fledgling and largely powerless government, based in the regional town of Baidoa, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, has blamed both the alliance and the United States for the fighting, the bloodiest Mogadishu has seen since the country collapsed into anarchy in 1991.
Konare “reiterates AU’s full support to the transitional federal government in Somalia in its efforts to restore lasting security, stability and reconciliation in Somalia,” added the statement released by the Addis Ababa-based body.
The United States has declined to comment on support for the alliance but US officials have told AFP it has received US money and is one of several groups they are working with to contain threats from Muslim extremists in Somalia.
Source: AFP, May 20, 2006
