Gedi says 8,000 foreign fighters with Islamists

December 25, 2006

Residents inspect a fire engine damaged during an Ethiopian air strike at Mogadishu’s international airport December 25, 2006. Ethiopian warplanes bombed the main airport in Mogadishu on Monday, wounding one person in Somalia’s capital where Islamists have their stronghold, an airport official said. (Shabelle Media/Reuters)

“My confidence is very high. We have enough military forces to defeat any invasion, any attack by the terrorists of the so-called Islamic Courts,” Gedi told Reuters in an interview by telephone from Baidoa on Sunday night.

The town is the government’s sole base, which the Islamists are seeking to encircle after nearly a week of heavy fighting between the two sides.

Saying government troops inflicted a major defeat on the Islamists near the town of Dinsoor on Sunday, Gedi predicted the government, which now has overt military support from Ethiopia, would be victorious.

“We will definitely remain in Baidoa. If we go anywhere, it will be to (the capital) Mogadishu,” he said.

“Once they get defeated, they will run away. Then we will move to Mogadishu, where the people are waiting for us.”

Born out of sharia courts, the Islamists took Mogadishu and a swathe of south Somalia in June, challenging the government’s aspiration to restore central rule to the Horn of Africa nation for the first time since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.

Gedi said foreign Muslim militants were pouring into Somalia and this he said confirmed the government’s accusations the Islamists were led by terrorists.

“Their numbers have doubled in just the last few weeks to about 8,000,” he said. “Only in the Dinsoor area on Sunday, where we had the worst fighting yet, there were more than 4,000 foreign fighters.”

Picture Evidence

Gedi, a veterinary surgeon by profession, said government forces had photos of three slain foreign Arab fighters — whose nationalities could not be identified — and had captured an Afghan flag on the battlefield.

“The presence of international terrorists makes this a global issue,” he said. “These people only want power through bloodshed.”

Gedi said “hundreds” of Islamists had been killed in the fighting so far. The Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) also says it has killed hundreds. There has been no independent verification on the ground.

He said the government was grateful to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi for his country’s support.

Addis Ababa, which had previously only acknowledged sending hundreds of military trainers to Baidoa, said on Sunday it was at war with the Islamists and had dispatched forces into Somalia “to protect the sovereignty” of Ethiopia.

Gedi said Addis Ababa’s involvement was provoked by Islamist infiltration into Ethiopian territory.

He urged the international community to keep up the pressure on the Islamists to halt attacks and return to the negotiating table, while also preparing for an inevitable humanitarian crisis from the conflict.

Kenya is bracing itself for a flood of refugees, and aid agencies are seeking to get emergency food and supplies into affected areas.

Gedi called for the acceleration of a U.N.-endorsed plan to send African peacekeepers into Somalia. “I think that must happen. It is a global responsibility.”

Such a mission, however, looks unlikely in the short-term as the only nation to pledge troops, Uganda, has signalled it will not send soldiers until security improves