From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Thu Jul 24 2008 - 16:09:53 EDT
Mail & Guardian - South Africa
Somali Islamist vows to protect aid workers
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA Jul 24 2008 11:38
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, has vowed to protect aid workers in the Horn
of Africa nation where insecurity has prevented many groups from
working.
The United Nations warns that the killing and kidnapping of aid workers
in Somalia threatens to wreck attempts to resolve a humanitarian
disaster labelled one of the world's worst.
Aweys, who is on the United States and UN terrorism lists, called upon
the world to help his Eritrea-based opposition group kick out Ethiopian
troops that have battled Islamist insurgents in Somalia in increasingly
bloody hit-and-run attacks.
"We are very grateful to the aid workers who are helping the starving
Somali community and we strongly condemn those who kill or abduct them,"
Aweys told Reuters by telephone.
"We shall do what we can to safeguard aid workers, especially in the
areas under our control. We shall help, escort and defend them. They are
killed by the enemies who put the blame on us," the former prison
service colonel said late on Wednesday.
A wave of recent assassinations of senior Somali humanitarian workers
has shocked aid groups and forced many to reconsider operations in the
lawless nation, which has been without an effective central government
since 1991.
Aweys took over leadership of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of
Somalia (ARS), an umbrella group based in Eritrea's capital, on Tuesday
from its moderate head, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
Ahmed, along with 36 other ARS members, were expelled from the group for
signing a deal in Djibouti last month with Somalia's interim government
that set a timetable for Ethiopia's withdrawal and the deployment of UN
peacekeepers.
Many insurgents and members of the ARS have rejected the deal.
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