Somali government claims victory

MOGADISHU – Somalia’s transitional government claimed its Ethiopian-backed armed forces had inflicted heavy losses on Islamic fighters in an upsurge in a conflict threatening to embroil the entire region.

Rival forces pounded each other with heavy shells and rockets near the seat of government in Baidoa, about 250 kilometres (155 mile) northwest of the capital Mogadishu, and hundreds of terrified civilians fled the battlezone.

“The onslaught of the Islamic Courts Union and their terrorist allies has been defeated,” the information ministry in Baidoa said, adding that “hundreds” of Islamic fighters had been killed.

The clashes began overnight Tuesday after Islamist forces attacked government training camps in Daynunay and Manas, each within 30 kilometres (20 miles) of Baidoa.

“The ICU sustained hundreds of their combatants dead while other hundreds are wounded,” the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier, Islamic commander Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal told AFP the fighting “could result in heavy casualties.”

Residents said hundreds of civilians fled the battlezones in southern Somalia, where nearly a million people have already been affected by heavy flooding.

“People have already started fleeing (from the area) and there are a lot of armed forces from both sides,” Muhidin Ali Mursal, a resident of a village near Idale, told AFP.

The fighting came a day after the expiry of an Islamist ultimatum for Ethiopian forces backing the weak government to withdraw.

The statement made no mention of Ethiopian troops despite witness accounts of them participating in the fighting that erupted midnight Tuesday, two hours after after the expiry of the Islamist ultimatum.

It added that the two military outposts had come under sustained mortar fire on the outskirts of Baidoa.

The fighting occurred on the day European Commissioner Louis Michel held talks with President Abdullahi Yusuf and Islamists chief Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and announced their willingness to resume stalled peace talks and halt hostilities.

“Both parties … have reiterated their commitment to the Khartoum dialogue process and political solution to the Somali crisis,” Michel told a press conference after returning to Nairobi.

They agreed to “an immediate cessation of hostilities and refrain from any hostile acts (and) to resume the Khartoum dialogue process unconditionally,” he added. No date for a resumption was given.

The leader of the Islamists, Sheikh Hassan, played down the clashes as “a small incident” pitting his forces against Ethiopian troops and not the government.

“The fighting was a small incident,” Aweys told a reporters in Mogadishu after the meeting with the Brussels envoy.

“We had a meeting with the EU and the meeting was significant and it ended in mutual understanding,” Aweys added, without elaborating.

Arab League-mediated peace talks collapsed last month when the Islamists refused to meet the government until Ethiopian troops, deployed to protect the government, withdraw.

The Islamists, who control swathes of southern and central Somalia and are accused of links to Al-Qeada, have already declared a holy war on Ethiopian forces and claimed first blood in recent skirmishes with Addis Ababa troops.

Deputy defence minister Salad Ali Jelle said one group of Islamist fighters involved in the clashes was led by Sudanese national, Abu Taha al-Sudan, one of three extremists wanted by Washington.

“Al-Sudan, the terrorist is leading the Islamic courts militias in the fighting,” said Jelle. “We have information that he is the one who attacked us is Idale,” one of the government training camps.

Ethiopia has sent several hundred military trainers and advisers to help the government, but denies widespread reports it had deployed thousands of combat troops to Somalia.

Analysts have warned that a war in Somalia would engulf the whole region, drawing in Ethiopia’s arch-foe Eritrea, as both countries are accused of fighting a proxy war in the lawless country.

Somalia has lacked an effective administration since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and the two-year-old government has failed to exert control across the impoverished nation of 10 million people.