MOGADISHU (Reuters) – A Somali Islamist rebel leader on U.S. and U.N. terrorism lists is seriously injured from fighting between rival Islamist groups and may be dead, a family member and a militia opposed to him said on Sunday.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys’ own insurgent movement, Hizbul Islam, denied the reports of his death as “propaganda.”
If true, Aweys’ death would be a major blow to the Islamist rebels and a boost for President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s Western-backed government, which had tried unsuccessfully to broker peace talks with the 62-year-old cleric.
Aweys, whom western security services say is close to al Qaeda, is a father figure to the insurgents in Somalia, where he has headed various Islamist groups since the 1990s.
“We understand that Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys was brought yesterday to his brother’s house,” a family member, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
“We were denied access but confirmed there were doctors in the area … The mood looks like he is dead. The whole area is surrounded by gunmen and there is no access,” he added, of the house close to Mogadishu’s football stadium.
The government-allied moderate Islamist militia Ahla Sunna Waljamaca said its fighters shot Aweys during battles in Wabho town on Friday, and that he died of wounds later.
There were also rumours among militia fighters that another rebel leader, Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki, was among the 123 combatants who died in the fighting around Wabho.
An Islamist insurgency since early 2007, the latest cycle in 19 years of conflict in the Horn of Africa nation, has killed around 18,000 civilians and thousands more fighters.
It has also drawn foreign jihadists into Somalia, enabled piracy to flourish offshore and unsettled the whole of East Africa, with neighbours Kenya and Ethiopia on high alert.
THREE DIE IN BOMB
In Mogadishu, where hardline Islamist insurgents al Shabaab have been battling the government’s security forces, three people died on Sunday when a remote control mine meant for a police car struck another vehicle.
“The police car was driving at high speed and the bomb missed it and struck a civilian car which was behind the police car,” witness Abdullahi Farah Nor told Reuters.
Gunmen in the capital also shot and killed Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe, a director of privately-owned radio station Shabelle, and injured a colleague. “They shot the director in the head and he died on the spot,” a witness said.
Hirabe, 48, was the fifth journalist murdered this year in Somalia, one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters to operate. Colleagues suspected that a broadcast on Aweys’ battle injuries may have prompted the attack.
“God knows who attacked us, but we suspect the news we aired this morning,” said Ahmed Omar Tajir, a reporter who suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach when Hirabe was killed.
Somali president Ahmed, in an interview published on Sunday in Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper, said al Qaeda was targeting Somalia as a strategic base for operations.
“Today there are al Qaeda cells in the country. So this isn’t Somalia’s problem but the world’s,” he said.
“Al Qaeda is looking at Somalia as a strategic post, different from Afghanistan, to create its network. Somalia has become their priority. We have a very long coast.”
The president said his government needed another six to eight months to build a security force capable of beating rebel groups al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam. “We want dialogue but they oppose it,” he added, saying Eritrea was backing Hizbul Islam, while al Shabaab was linked to al Qaeda.
Underlining the consequences at sea of the lawlessness onshore, the French navy handed four injured pirates over to authorities in the north Somali region of Puntland for trial. The four were originally captured by an Indian warship.
(Additional reporting by Mohamed Ahmed and Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Abdiqani Hassan in Bosasso, Phil Stewart in Rome)
Somali broadcaster killed by masked gunmen: AP
CNN) — The director of a Somali radio station was shot dead and a colleague seriously injured in the capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday, according to a local journalist and a Somali journalists’ organization.
The assassination of Mukhtar Mohammad Hirabe of Shabelle Media follows last week’s abduction of a station director for TV Universal.
Hirabe was shot in the head, the journalist said. His colleague Ahmed Omar Tajir was hospitalized.
Two men with pistols attacked the two men as they were talking together, said a statement from the National Union of Somali Journalists.
Hirabe, 48, director of Radio Shabelle, was shot in the head five times, and Tajir — identified in the statement as Ahmed Omar Hashi, 47, Radio Shabelle’s news editor — was shot twice in the stomach.
Five journalists have been killed in the east African nation this year, including three from Shabelle, the group said.
The incidents have left the media community reeling in the east African nation, which has not had an effective government since 1991.
The union’s statement condemned the violence, with its secretary general, Omar Faruk Osman, saying Hirabe’s death was “premeditated and targeted. … Colleagues who are committed to do their job in this extreme situation need to be protected.”
Another journalist, Nur Muse Hussein, 56, died last month after being shot in April, the organization said.
CNN regularly works with Somali journalists who are employed by Shabelle Media.
Somali president warns of Al Qaeda setting up base in Somalia – report
ROME (AFP)–Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed warned Sunday that there was a “real risk” of Al-Qaeda setting up a “strategic zone” for its network in Somalia, as it did in Afghanistan.
In an interview published in the Italian economic daily Il Sole 24 Ore, Sharif said Al-Qaeda has been eyeing the Horn of Africa nation with its long coastline and cells of the extremist group are already established there.
“Al-Qaeda sees Somalia as a strategic zone like Afghanistan to establish its network. We have become a priority…. It is a real risk,” said Ahmed, who will travel to Italy Tuesday for an international conference on his country, a former Italian colony.
“We’re not talking about the Somalia of the 1990s. Today, there are Al-Qaeda cells in the country. It is no longer just Somalia’s problem, it’s the world’s problem,” he told the newspaper.
“The international community has a duty to protect Somalis and the government from Al-Qaeda. It must do it for the good of everyone.”
Stressing the “long and good relations” between Somalia and Italy, he urged Rome to take the lead in getting the rest of the European Union to support his fledgling government under siege from a hardline Islamist insurgency.
Sharif’s government, which has been confined to parts of the capital Mogadishu, took up power in January after a U.N.-sponsored reconciliation process.
