[dehai-news] (Reuters): Islamists threaten to shut down Mogadishu airport


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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sun Sep 14 2008 - 06:13:37 EDT


Islamists threaten to shut down Mogadishu airport
Sun 14 Sep 2008, 8:28 GMT

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali Islamists have threatened to stop planes using Mogadishu's main airport as part of an escalating insurgency rocking the Horn of Africa nation.

The hardline Islamist group Al Shabaab, which is fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian military backers, said it would stop planes from landing after midnight on Tuesday.

"We banned all planes from Mogadishu after confirming that American spies, the African Union, Ethiopians and the infidel government troops use the airport," said a statement in Somali on www.kataaib.net, one of several sites used by the militants.

The sea-front airport in south Mogadishu is used for government and commercial flights. African Union (AU) peacekeepers and some visiting U.N. missions also fly there.

Aid groups tend to use other landing strips.

"We warn the Somali businessmen: Ethiopia gets revenue from Mogadishu airport. (AU mission) Amisom and Ethiopians also transport their injured and dead soldiers from this airport," said the statement that appeared at the weekend.

The African Union has 2,200 peacekeepers in Somalia, mainly based at the airport. They have done little to stem the violence and the pan-African body wants to hand over to the United Nations.

BOMB KILLS UGANDAN SOLDIER

The airport has suffered a string of attacks since Islamists launched an Iraq-style insurgency in 2007 after being driven out of Mogadishu by combined Somali-Ethiopian troops.

Several times, shells have hit the airport around the time President Abdullahi Yusuf's plane has taken off.

There was no immediate response to Al Shabaab's threat from the government or African Union.

The statement reflects the growing confidence of one of the main players in the Somali war. The group recently led an Islamist takeover of the southern port of Kismayu, giving it a strategic sea access and proximity to the Kenyan border.

Al Shabaab appears to have stepped up activities, and widened its sphere of targets, since being put on Washington's terrorist list earlier this year.

In the latest attack, a roadside bomb planted by suspected Islamists hit an AU car in Mogadishu on Sunday, killing one Ugandan soldier and wounding another, AU staff said.

"The car was inspecting mines at Haji Dol, the same place where they always target us," an anonymous AU source added.

There was also fighting between Islamists and AU troops at the Kilometer 4 area of Mogadishu on Sunday, locals said.

"Two of my kids are missing and what I hear is only the constant crash of mortars. We cannot go out of our houses and the roads are blocked," Mogadishu resident Seinab Farah said.

Somalia's civil war has killed more than 8,000 civilians since last year -- and an unknown number of combatants. One million people are living as internal refugees in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Aid workers are increasingly targeted for assassinations.

© Reuters 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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