From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Sep 19 2008 - 11:10:57 EDT
Battles rock Mogadishu as Islamists show strength Fri 19 Sep 2008, 12:44 GMT
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.
(Additional reporting by Sahra Abdi in Kismayu; Writing by Daniel Wallis;
editing by Ralph Boulton)
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