Islamist abandon Kismayo, head for Kenya border

It was not clear where the leaders and fighters of the SICC — who had their backs to the Indian Ocean and the Kenyan border after being chased from Mogadishu on Thursday — had gone.

But one Jilib resident said he believed they were moving further south to the hilly region of Buur Gaabo, just inside Somalia from the border with Kenya. “If they go there, it will be very hard for the Ethiopians to get them,” he said.

Kenya has beefed up its border, though it is long and porous. And U.S. boats were believed by diplomats to be patrolling the sea off Somalia to prevent SICC leaders, or foreign militant supporters, escaping.

Some Islamist fighters may simply have dumped their uniforms and melted away into the Somali bush, analysts speculated.

“Once we know where they have gone in Somalia, they will be followed, because they are in the company of foreign fighters,” Somali Information Minister Ali Jama Jangali told Reuters.

The retreat of the Islamists caps a remarkable advance by the Ethiopian-government force.

Just two weeks ago, the Islamists had appeared on the verge of routing the government which had no control beyond its base in the provincial trading town of Baidoa.

But the intervention of Ethiopia — the Horn of Africa’s military power — reversed the situation, with air strikes and heavy bombardment on land pushing the Islamists first back to Mogadishu then south to Kismayu.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, are believed to have died.

SHELLS THEN SILENCE

Witnesses at Jilib, north of Kismayu, said mortar and rocket firing between the two sides stopped late on Sunday.

“Fighting stopped at around 10 p.m. (1900 GMT),” said a resident, who asked not to be named. “Then there was a big silence. Then the Islamic Courts just left.”

While Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Somali government leaders President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi will be delighted with the Islamists’ flight, analysts warn the conflict may be far from over.

The Islamists, who had swelled their ranks with foreign fighters, may now concentrate on Iraq-style guerrilla tactics against a government they see as illegitimate and propped up by a hated and traditionally Christian foreign power.

Islamist fighter numbers were believed to number about 3,000. Ethiopia says it has 4,000 troops in Somalia, though many believe that number could be far higher.

Somalia’s government has not given troop numbers, but is thought by experts to have several thousand.

Born out of sharia courts operating in Mogadishu, the Islamists threw U.S.-backed warlords out of the capital in June.

They brought order to Mogadishu for the first time since 1991 when warlords ousted a dictator. But some of their hardline practices — like closing cinemas and holding public executions — angered Somalis, who are traditionally moderate Muslims.

Both Addis Ababa and Washington say the SICC is a dangerous Taliban-like movement linked to al Qaeda, an accusation the movement says was trumped up to justify foreign intervention.

Government leaders Yusuf and Gedi face a monumental task to tame a nation U.S. forces left more than a decade ago after an ill-fated intervention captured in the film “Black Hawk Down”.

Analysts say it is hard to see how they can establish authority and pacify Somalia without the military presence of Ethiopia, which has vowed to leave as soon as it can. But Somalis may resent the presence of Ethiopia, their traditional enemy.

The government also has the threat of re-emerging warlords, and the possibility of guerrilla attacks by the Islamists, to contend with. “Sadly, it will still be a long, long time before we see peace in Somalia,” a Horn of Africa expert said.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, in his New Year’s message, called for an urgent summit of the east African regional body IGAD to discuss the Somali situation.

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IGAD has plans to deploy peacekeepers in Somalia. (Additional reporting by Bryson Hull and Guled Mohamed in Mogadishu, Andrew Cawthorne and David Mageria in Nairobi)

KISMAYO, Somalia – Fighting erupted Sunday on the outskirts of the last remaining stronghold of Somalia’s militant Islamic movement, as thousands of residents streamed from the area ahead of the feared battle with Ethiopian-backed government troops.

Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said the militants in the coastal city of Kismayo were sheltering three men wanted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 250 people.

“If we capture them alive we will hand them over to the United States,” Gedi said.

The fighting broke out in Helashid, 11 miles northwest of the southern town of Jilib, the gateway to Kismayo, where an estimated 3,000 hardcore fighters were preparing for a bloody showdown.

“I can hear artillery and heavy weapons being fired outside of town,” said Abdi Malik, a charity worker in Jilib, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Ethiopian MiG fighter jets were also buzzing Kismayo, an AP reporter said.

Islamic leaders vowed to make a stand against Ethiopia, which has one of the largest armies in Africa, or begin an Iraq-style guerrilla war.

“My fighters will defeat the Ethiopians forces,” Sheik Ahmed Mohamed Islan, the head of the Islamic movement in the Kismayo region told The Associated Press.

“Even if we are defeated we will start an insurgency. We will kill every Somali that supports the government and Ethiopians.”

Mohamed Suldan Ali, a resident of Jilib, said the Islamic forces had littered the approach to the town with remote-controlled land mines. Another resident said the fighters had destroyed three approach bridges to the town.

Up to 2,000 people fled, carrying what they could. “I don’t know where to go we are terrified because we can hear the fighting,” said Howo Nor, a mother of three.

Many were headed for the Kenyan border.

In the past 10 days, the Islamic group has been forced from the capital, Mogadishu, and other key towns in the face of attacks led by Ethiopia, the region’s greatest military power.

The U.S. government has a counterterrorism task force based in neighboring Djibouti and has been training Kenyan and Ethiopian forces. The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet also has a maritime task force patrolling international waters off Somalia. It will prevent terrorists from launching an “attack or to transport personnel, weapons or other material,” Commander Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, told the AP.

Gedi said he spoke Sunday to the U.S. ambassador in Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, about sealing the Kenyan border with Somalia to prevent the three al-Qaida suspects — Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, a Sudanese — from fleeing.

Somalia’s interim government and its Ethiopian allies have long accused Islamic militias harboring al-Qaida, and the U.S. government has said the 1998 bombers have become leaders in the Islamic movement in Africa.

“We would like to capture or kill these guys at any cost,” Gedi told the AP. “They are the root of the problem.”

Islamic movement leaders deny al-Qaida links, but in a recorded message posted on the Internet on Saturday, deputy al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri called on Somalia’s Muslims and other Muslims worldwide to continue the fight against “infidels and crusaders.”

Gedi accused al-Zawahri of trying to destabilize Somalia and its neighbors.

In Kenya, diplomatic efforts were under way to secure a peaceful end to the 12-day conflict.

Ibrahim Hassan Adow, the Islamic group’s foreign affairs chief, is in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, for talks, Islamic officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.

The speaker of the transitional government’s parliament, Sheik Sharif Hassan Aden, who has close sympathies with the Islamic group, also is in Kenya for talks.

The military advance marked a stunning turnaround for Somalia’s government, which just weeks ago could barely control one town — its base of Baidoa — while the Council of Islamic Courts controlled the capital and much of southern Somalia.

The Council of Islamic Courts, the umbrella group for the Islamic movement that ruled Mogadishu for six months, wants to transform Somalia into a strict Islamic state, Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, a former Mogadishu warlord who led the U.S.-backed alliance that was driven from the capital in June, said he believes that government control of the capital is an illusion and that Islamic fighters are ready to launch “urban guerrilla warfare.”

Late Saturday, an explosion in the capital left one woman dead and two others wounded.

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Associated Press writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Les Neuhaus and Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu contributed to this report.

As night fell, the Islamists who fled Mogadishu three days ago to take refuge around the towns of Kismayu and nearby Jilib, fired back from trenches in scrubby bushland, witnesses said.

“We will continue fighting the Ethiopians from everywhere until they leave Somalia,” Islamist spokesman Abdirahim Ali Mudey told Reuters from the area.

It was unclear if, after two weeks of war, the two sides would go on fighting through the night and into the New Year. Night battles are unusual in Somalia.

The besieged Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) has rallied several thousand fighters at Jilib, just north of the port town of Kismayu on the shores of the Indian Ocean, after a retreat south 300 km (190 miles) from the capital Mogadishu.

Fearing a blood-bath, residents ran for their lives, carrying blankets, food and water on their heads.

“Two-thirds of the population in Jilib have fled the town… nearly 4,700 have fled,” aid worker Osman Mohamed said.

The Islamists have built trenches with bulldozers and have more than 60 “technicals” — pickups mounted with heavy weapons — supporting some 3,000 fighters, witnesses say.

“We decided to come to the bush here in order to continue with the jihad against Ethiopia. I am on the frontline, I’m just waiting to kill the invading Ethiopians,” spokesman Mudey added.

Amid confusing initial reports, residents said they saw mortars and rockets falling on deserted houses in Jilib from Bulobaley on one of two roads the Ethiopian-Somali government force had been marching along toward the Islamist defenses.

“They are using heavy and light weapons against each other. I have to flee from some of the weapons that are hitting the town,” resident Madey Osman said.

Jilib lies about 45 kms (28 miles) north of Kismayu, where senior Islamist leaders Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed are based.

The intervention of Ethiopia has reversed the fortunes of the government and the hardline religious SICC, which just two weeks ago controlled the capital and appeared on the verge of routing a weak interim government stranded in a provincial town.

Now the government has control of Mogadishu and the Islamists — without tanks or planes — are fighting with their backs to the sea and Somalia’s southern border with Kenya.

FOREIGN MILITANTS

Kenya has reinforced its northern border and U.S. forces are also said to be in the region, including the sea, to prevent foreign militants aligned with the Islamists from escaping.

Ethiopia says it has 4,000 troops in Somalia, though many believe that number could be far higher.

Somalia’s government has not given troop numbers, but is thought by experts to have several thousand.

Islamist leaders called their flight to Kismayu a tactical move to avoid civilian bloodshed in Mogadishu.

The SICC who have been offered an amnesty by the government if they surrender, say they are ready to negotiate with the U.N.-endorsed interim government, but that the Ethiopian soldiers backing it must first leave.

Born out of sharia courts operating in Mogadishu, the Islamists threw U.S.-backed warlords out of the capital in June before going on to take a swathe of south Somalia.

They brought order to Mogadishu for the first time since 1991 when warlords ousted a dictator. But some of their hardline practices — like closing cinemas and holding public executions — angered some Somalis and fueled U.S. and Ethiopian accusations they were a dangerous Taliban-style movement.

Both Addis Ababa and Washington say the SICC is linked to al Qaeda, an accusation the movement says is trumped up to justify foreign intervention.

Ethiopia also accuses arch-foe Eritrea of supporting the Islamists. Eritrea has accused Ethiopia of planting Eritrean identity cards on the battlefield to back up those claims.

Mogadishu residents have greeted the joint Ethiopian and government force with a mix of jubilation, fear and protests.

President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi face a monumental task to tame the city that U.S. forces left more than a decade ago after an ill-fated intervention captured in the Hollywood film “Black Hawk Down.”

Analysts say it is hard to see how Yusuf and Gedi can establish authority and pacify Somalia without the military presence of Ethiopia, which has vowed to exit as soon as it can.

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(Additional reporting by Bryson Hull, Guled Mohamed and Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu)