From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Sat Aug 23 2008 - 16:46:21 EDT
Corpses litter Somali port seized by insurgents
Sat 23 Aug 2008, 13:54 GMT
By Sahra Abdi Ahmed
KISMAYU, Somalia (Reuters) - Bodies littered this strategic port in
southern Somalia and unidentified planes soared overhead on Saturday, a
day after it was seized by Islamist rebels in fighting that killed at
least 70 people.
The loss of Kismayu to the al-Shabaab insurgents was another blow for
Somalia's interim government, which signed a peace deal with some
opposition figures last week that has only seemed to stoke violence in
the Horn of Africa nation.
We are now collecting the corpses lying in the streets," resident
Mohamed Farah, 55, told Reuters.
"The town is calm today and we're busy burying the victims of the
fighting. The Islamists are at the abandoned sea and air ports, and
people here are hoping to reopen their businesses."
Since the start of last year, al-Shabaab rebels have been waging an
Iraq-style insurgency of mortar attacks, roadside bombings and
assassinations, targeting President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration and
its Ethiopian military allies.
Underlining the insecurity, residents and a security source said gunmen
kidnapped two Western journalists, an Australian man and a Canadian
woman, at Elasha near Mogadishu on Saturday.
"They left us this morning to visit internally displaced camps ... now
they are nowhere to be found," said Mohamed Ajos, head of security at
the capital's Shamo Hotel, where the pair were staying. "They are
believed to have been kidnapped."
UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT
A spokesman for Somali opposition hardliners based in Eritrea
congratulated the insurgents on seizing Kismayu.
"We'll continue our war against militiamen and all troops until we rule
the whole country by Islamic law," said Ismail Adow of the Alliance for
the Re-Liberation of Somalia.
"God willing, we shall establish an administration for Kismayu in the
coming days," he told Reuters by telephone from Asmara.
The artillery and gun battles that broke out on Wednesday around the
port were the heaviest in the area for months. Medical workers said at
least 140 people had been wounded.
Fearful residents said large, unidentified aircraft could be seen flying
over the area since then.
"We don't know what will happen, but we are scared," said 35-year-old
Hussein Ahmed.
It was not clear who sent the planes. The United States, which has
launched air strikes inside Somalia in recent months, officially listed
al-Shabaab earlier this year as a terrorist organisation with close ties
to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
Washington sees Somalia as a training ground for radical Islamists and
says militant leaders have made much of it a safe haven for high-level
suspects, including the bombers of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
a decade ago.
The violence in Somalia has killed more than 8,000 civilians and
uprooted 1 million since the beginning of 2007, when government forces
backed by Ethiopian tanks and warplanes drove a sharia courts group out
of the capital Mogadishu.
On Monday, U.N.-led talks in Djibouti produced a tentative peace
agreement between the government and some opposition figures. But the
deal had already been rejected by al-Shabaab commanders and other
opposition hardliners.
<http://africa.reuters.com/newsimages/2008/08/23/tn_2008-08-23T112435Z_0
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