Fierce battles rage in central Somalia

Ethiopian Information Minister Berhan Hailu said the operation targeted several fronts including Dinsoor, Bandiradley and Baladwayne and the town of Buur Hakaba — close to the administration’s encircled south-central base Baidoa.

It was the first use of airstrikes and the first public admission by Ethiopia of its involvement in Somalia, whose interim government is surrounded by heavily armed fighters of the powerful Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC).

“After too much patience, the Ethiopian government has taken self-defensive measures and started counter-attacking the aggressive extremist forces of the Islamic Courts and foreign terrorist groups,” Berhan told Reuters.

Diplomats fear Addis Ababa’s announcement of its involvement in Somalia has flagged off a war ensnaring Horn of Africa rivals Ethiopia and Eritrea, and possibly attracting foreign jihadists and triggering suicide bombings in east Africa.

Berhan gave no details, but Somali witnesses reported Ethiopian planes dropping bombs and firing missiles on two areas as fighting between the Islamists and pro-government forces raged for a sixth day.

Resident Abdirashid Hassan said he saw planes drop bombs on the outskirts of Baladwayne, 190 miles (300 km) north of the capital Mogadishu.

Another witness, businessman Farah Osman, said two Ethiopian planes fired missiles further north, near Bandiradley.

A senior Islamist, Sheikh Mahmud Ibrahim Suley, accused the Ethiopians of using MiG warplanes and helicopters.

“Today the war is being fought by land and air,” he told reporters in Mogadishu, adding that Islamists had destroyed five Ethiopian tanks. He did not comment on casualties.

Both sides say they have killed hundreds since the fighting began on Tuesday, although aid agencies report dozens of dead.

For months, witnesses have reported seeing thousands of Ethiopian troops deployed in Somalia to protect the government against the newly-powerful Islamists.

The SICC captured the capital Mogadishu and a swathe of southern Somalia in June, challenging the Western-backed government’s aim to restore central rule for the first time since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.

Memories
Fighters loyal to both sides started firing shells, rockets and machine guns at each other shortly after dawn on Sunday, witnesses said, in battles that spread to four fronts.

Military experts estimate Ethiopia has 15,000-20,000 troops in Somalia, while Eritrea has about 2,000 behind the Islamists.

Asmara denies the accusation, while Addis Ababa previously admitted to having a few hundred military trainers in Baidoa.

“Fighting is going on from one part of the country to the other. The Islamic Courts have ignited the war they promised yesterday,” Information Minister Ali Ahmed Jama “Jangali” told Reuters. “They will lose in this fighting.”

An Islamist fighter speaking from close to the semi-autonomous Puntland region, home of interim President Abdullahi Yusuf, said: “Now there is a full-blown war.”

Fighting was reported near Daynunay, the government’s forward military base about 20 km (12 miles) southeast of Baidoa. Battles also broke out in Manas, west of Baidoa, Kalaber to the north and Bandiradley, close to the border with Puntland with many people fleeing.

Witnesses reported an unmarked C-130 circling above Galkaayo, close to Puntland.

In Mogadishu, sombre-faced groups of men gathered to listen to radio news broadcasts and some made calls to relatives in the battle zones.

Late on Friday, a van with loudspeakers patrolled the streets of the war-scarred city asking residents and shopkeepers to contribute to the “jihad” efforts.

Several radio stations aired patriotic songs, urging Somalis to defend their country, some dating from the 1977-78 Ogaden war, fought against a backdrop of shifting Cold War alliances.

During that war, Ethiopia’s army crushed Somali troops who tried to lay claim to the ethnically Somali Ogaden region.

Towns, airports bombed: sources

ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA: Ethiopian warplanes attacked Somalia Sunday, destroying a recruiting center for Islamist fighters and solidifying fears that a dreaded regional war has now begun.

According to witnesses, the warplanes bombarded several towns while Ethiopian tanks pushed aggressively into territory that had been controlled by Somalia’s Islamist forces. That ignited fighting up and down the Somali coast, with Ethiopian troops locked in an escalating battle against Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement.

“The Ethiopians are blowing things up all over the place,” said Mohammed Hussein Galgal, an Islamist commander in Beledweyne, near the Ethiopian border. “Civilians have been killed, people are fleeing. But don’t worry, we won’t be defeated.”

Ethiopian officials said today that they had run out of patience with the Islamist leaders, who have declared war on Ethiopia and vowed to turn Somalia into a recruiting ground for anti-Ethiopian fighters.

“What did you expect us to do?” said Zemedkun Tekle, a spokesman for Ethiopia’s information ministry. “Wait for them to attack our cities?” Mr. Zemedkun said his country had initiated “counter-attack measures in the interests of protecting our sovereignty and stability.”

Somalia has two rival governments – the weak, internationally recognized transitional government, marooned in the inland city of Baidoa, and the Islamist forces, a popular grassroots movement that controls much of the country, including the battle-scared seaside capital, Mogadishu.

Since the Islamists came to power in June, Ethiopia has been increasingly involved in internal Somali politics, trying to protect the transitional government from advances by the Islamist forces.

Heavy fighting erupted last week between the two sides, and witnesses said the teenage soldiers of the Islamists were no match for the more professional (and adult) forces of Ethiopia and the transitional government.

Ethiopia has the most powerful military in the region, trained by American advisors and funded by American aid. American officials have acknowledged that they tacitly supported Ethiopia’s decision to send troops to Somalia because they felt it was the best way to check the growing power of the Islamists, whom American officials have accused of sheltering Al Qaeda terrorists. Until today, Ethiopian officials denied they had combat forces in Somalia, saying instead that their presence was limited to a few hundred military advisors.

That changed today when witnesses in several towns in Somalia reported seeing Ethiopian fighter planes shoot across the sky.

Residents of Beledweyne, which is controlled by the Islamists, said Ethiopian bombers blew up an Islamist recruitment center, killing several civilians, and dropped bombs on Islamists troops hiding in the hills.

Though western diplomats had been urging Ethiopia to use restraint, Ethiopia’s attacks today did not come as a surprise. The question now seems to be if Ethiopia will go into Mogadishu and try to finish off the Islamist military, which many fear could spur a long and ugly insurgency, or simply deal them enough of a blow to force them back to the negotiating table with the transitional government. Ethiopia’s prime minister recently told American officials that he could wipe out the Islamists ” in one to two weeks.”

What complicates the issue is the presence of other foreign troops inside Somalia and the rising potential for Somalia’s neighbors to be dragged in. United Nations officials estimate that there are several thousand soldiers from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s arch-enemy, fighting for the Islamists, along with a growing number of Muslim mercenaries from Yemen, Egypt, Syria and Libya who want to turn Somalia into the third front of jihad, after Iraq and Afghanistan. On Friday, residents of Mogadishu said they saw boatloads of armed men landing on the city’s beaches.

Somalia and Ethiopia have had bad blood between them for years. Ethiopia has a long and storied Christian identity, while Somalia is almost purely Muslim. The two countries fought a costly war in 1977 and 1978, when Somali forces tried to reclaim a border area only to be routed by Ethiopian troops. Since then, Ethiopia has, on several occasions, teamed up with various clans in Somalia’s interclan wars. Those wars led to the collapse of the central government in 1991, followed by 15 years of anarchy.

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(Source: International Herald Tribune; December 24, 2006)