KISMAYO, Somalia, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Islamist forces took over Somalia’s strategic southern port city of Kismayo on Monday after the warlord in charge of the region fled, an Islamist source said.
Colonel Abdikadir Adan Shire, also known as Barre Hiraale, is defence minister in Somalia’s weak interim government and led the Juba Valley Alliance, an independent authority that has controlled the region around Somalia’s third largest city.
His deputy, Yusuf Mire Mahmud, confirmed Barre Hiraale’s hasty exit on Sunday following a split within the Alliance on how to respond to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which seized Mogadishu and other parts of southern Somalia earlier this year.
The Islamists have in the last month been urging Barre Hiraale to hand over the city, since many of the militias protecting it have clan alignments close to the Islamists.
“Kismayo has fallen and not a single bullet was fired,” the Islamist source in the capital Mogadishu told Reuters.
A Kismayo resident said Islamist troops and military trucks had entered the city.
The Islamists’ advances since June have challenged the authority of the militarily weak interim government, backed by the West and regional power Ethiopia.
Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari quoted deputy prime minister Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed as saying prior to the takeover that any attack on Kismayo would breach a ceasefire deal between the administration and the Islamists agreed during recent talks in Khartoum.
Rumours of an impending flare-up in Kismayo sent thousands of refugees fleeing to Kenya in recent days, with 300-600 arriving daily in the Dadaab camps just over the border, according to the United Nations.
Formed in 2004, the interim government of President Abdullahi Yusuf has struggled to reimpose central rule in Somalia for the first time since warlords ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, carving the country into a patchwork of personal fiefdoms. (Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu and Hassan Yare in Baidoa)
Source: Reuters, Sept 24, 2006
