JOWHAR, Somalia (Reuters) – Islamist insurgents closed in on Somalia’s coastal capital after seizing another strategic town north of Mogadishu Monday.
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s forces control only parts of the city and central region after two weeks of fighting. Human rights workers in the Horn of Africa nation say the clashes have killed at least 172 civilians and wounded 528.
Ahmed’s U.N.-backed administration is the 15th attempt to set up central rule in Somalia, which has been in anarchy for 18 years. Neighboring states and Western security forces fear the country could become a haven for al Qaeda-linked extremists.
Hardline al Shabaab rebels seized Jowhar Sunday and witnesses said hundreds of gunmen from another insurgent group — Hizbul Islam — marched into nearby Mahaday Monday and took control without firing a shot.
“We have captured the town peacefully,” Hassan Mahdi, Hizbul Islam’s spokesman, said by telephone.
There was heavy fighting, however, between the hardline rebels and the more moderate Ahlu Sunna Islamists in the central town of Wahbo, the scene of fierce clashes late last week.
“We attacked al Shabaab in the corner of Wabho and killed 20 including a foreigner,” Sheikh Abdullahi sheikh Abu Yussuf, spokesman of Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca told Reuters.
Jowhar, 90 km (60 miles) from Mogadishu, is Ahmed’s hometown and links the capital to Somalia’s volatile central region. Mahaday is 23 km (14 miles) north of Jowhar.
“Masked Islamists are on the streets,” resident Fatima Hussein told Reuters. “They are not speaking to anyone … there was no fighting, the pro-government forces left last night.”
ETHIOPIA WATCHING CLOSELY Officials in Ahmed’s administration could not immediately be reached for comment.
Ahmed was chairman of the Islamic Courts Union that ran Mogadishu in 2006 before Ethiopian troops, wary of having an Islamist state next door, invaded and ousted them from power.
Since the Ethiopians intervened, fighting has killed at least 17,700 civilians and driven more than 1 million from their homes. More than 3 million people survive on emergency food aid.
The Ethiopian troops pulled out of Somalia at the start of this year, but hardline Islamists carried on attacking the new government and African Union peacekeepers in the capital.
“We are following the situation closely but we feel the problem is contained within Somalia. At this point there is no present and immediate danger to Ethiopia that would prompt our intervention,” Bereket Simon, the Ethiopian government’s head of information told reporters.
“We still have information that al Shabaab are not able to penetrate central Somalia and are not accepted by the clans that live around central Somalia,” he said.
In the central town of Mahas, witnesses said Shabaab fighters beheaded a local elder and burned his body Sunday.
“We have carried his bones and some of his burned flesh and had a burial this morning,” resident Ahmed Farah told Reuters.
“They always do this when they want to terrorize residents.”
Somali pirates have taken advantage of the chaos to launch ever bolder attacks on shipping. Nearly 30 hijackings this year have put it on course to be the worst ever.
The bloodshed has also forced many Somalis to flee west across the porous, desert border into Kenya.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said Monday more than 270,000 refugees in Kenya were facing such alarming shortages of food, water and adequate shelter in overcrowded camps that many were considering returning to the Somali war zone.
(Additional reporting by Abdi Guled and Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu, Barry Malone in Addis Ababa; Writing by Daniel Wallis; editing by David Clarke and Richard Balmforth)
MOGADISHU, Somalia – Islamic insurgents in Somalia sustained their offensive on the nation’s fragile government and captured a strategic southeastern town Sunday, hours after a key Islamic militia leader defected to the government, witnesses and officials said.
The defection of Sheik Yusuf Indahaadde with his militiamen late Saturday — as reported by the government — would be a major boost for Somalia’s weak, U.N.-backed state.
But al-Shabab fighters captured the key agricultural town of Jowhar, 55 miles (90 kilometers) northeast of Mogadishu, the capital, and a key link to central Somalia, residents said. Government officials denied Jowhar had fallen to the Islamists, but the residents said the insurgents were in control.
The U.S. State Department considers al-Shabab a terrorist organization, with links to al-Qaida. The group denies this.
The insurgents launched fierce attacks this past week, the worst violence in weeks in Mogadishu. More than 100 civilians were killed and at least 30,000 people fled their homes. There has been concern that the government may collapse if the fighting in Mogadishu persists.
There has been a lull in fighting since Friday, but observers fear that if the insurgents seize Mogadishu, they will gain a safe haven in the Horn of Africa.
In Jowhar, resident Hamdi Da’ud said he saw the bodies of three pro-government militiamen on the street after insurgents fought a 20-minute battle with pro-government forces. Both sides fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at each other.
“Hundreds of additional fighters poured into the town moments after the pro-government Islamists fled to the outskirts of Jowhar,” resident Isse Abdulle told The Associated Press by phone.
Information Minister Farhan Ali Mahmud said the Islamic insurgents have not captured Jowhar but that the fighting was continuing.
President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed’s government only directly controls a few blocks of Mogadishu and the border town of El Berde. But Ahmed has allies among the militias that control much of central Somalia and pockets of the south. Al-Shabab controls much of southern Somalia. Northern Somalia is run by two autonomous governments that are opposed to the Islamists, but are not allied with Ahmed’s government.
Mahmud also told The Associated Press that Islamic militia leader Sheik Yusuf Indahaadde defected to the government side with all his militiamen late Saturday.
Until his reported defection, Indahaadde led the militia of a faction of a key Islamic insurgent group, the Islamic Party. The leader of that faction, Sheik Mohamed Amey, confirmed that his group will fight alongside government forces.
The Islamic Party has been split over whether to work with Ahmed’s government, now that it aims to implement Shariah law. Amey and Indahaadde had been pushing for the party to join the government.
Indahaadde and Ahmed were leaders of the umbrella Islamic group, the Council of Islamic Courts, that controlled Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia for six months in 2006. Indahaadde was the defense chief and Ahmed led the group’s executive committee.
Ethiopia sent troops to back Somalia’s government in December 2006 and ousted the Islamic group, but the troops withdrew in January under an intricate peace deal mediated by the U.N.
Ahmed was elected president under the deal.
Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The warlords then turned on each other, plunging the Horn of Africa nation into anarchy and chaos. The lawless has also allowed piracy to thrive off Somalia’s coast.
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Associated Press writer Mohamed Olad Hassan contributed to this report.
68 killed, 3300 flee central Somalia fighting
MOGADISHU (Reuters) — Clashes between moderate Islamists and the hardline al Shabaab have killed 68 people in central Somalia and sent 3,300 others fleeing, pro-government forces and a rights group said today.
The Horn of Africa nation has been hit by some of the worst fighting in months and the interim government is struggling to control a powerful insurgency trying to topple President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s administration.
“We have killed 47 al Shabaab fighters including a white man in Mahas and Wabho,” Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf, spokesman of the moderate Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, told Reuters.
“From our side, three died and 10 were injured. We shall continue fighting to uproot al Shabaab.”
The Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights organisation said that 18 civilians were killed in clashes on Friday and Saturday, and that 3,300 people had fled their homes.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions more displaced since then.
