From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Sep 19 2008 - 10:50:56 EDT
Battles rock Mogadishu as Islamists show strength
Fri 19 Sep 2008
By Abdi Sheikh and Ibrahim Mohamed
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's warring parties pounded each other
with artillery in Mogadishu on Friday after an African Union military
aircraft defied a rebel ban on planes using the capital's international
airport.
Witnesses said at least seven people were killed.
Islamist insurgents from the country's hardline al Shabaab group
had threatened to shoot down any aircraft trying to land after Tuesday,
and the airport has been abandoned since then.
In another show of their increasing strength, the Islamists have
also chased away pro-government militia who were manning roadblocks in
the south of the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
On Friday, a plane supplying a small AU peacekeeping force in the
city managed to touch down at Mogadishu's coastal airstrip, provoking a
barrage of mortar fire from the rebels.
Government forces and their Ethiopian allies responded with missiles and mortar fire of their own.
"The al Shabaab are still shelling the airport, but the plane and
our soldiers are safe so far," said one AU official in the city who
asked not to be named.
He said the aircraft had been carrying troops from Burundi.
At least four civilians died and seven were injured when a shell landed on the Kilometre 4 area of Mogadishu.
"A group of local teenagers was sitting playing cards here under a
big tree," witness Abdullahi Farah told Reuters. "Now their flesh is
scattered everywhere."
Residents said a house was also hit and burning in another neighbourhood. They said there were three bodies inside.
Since the start of last year, the rebels have waged an Iraq-style
insurgency of mortar attacks, roadside bombings and assassinations
targeting the fragile Western-back interim government and its Ethiopian
military allies.
This year, Washington officially listed the group as a terrorist organisation with close ties to al Qaeda.
Fighting in Somalia has killed more than 9,500 civilians since last
year, and an unknown number of combatants. More than 1 million people
have been forced from their homes.
Earlier on Friday, the government's director of civil aviation said
it had cancelled the licences of all airlines that had heeded the
"unimportant and baseless" threats from the Islamists and had stopped
flying into Mogadishu airport.
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnLJ571974.html
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