MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somalia’s warlords have agreed to disarm their militia and join a new national army. The agreement was reached shortly after clan gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade and briefly exchanged gunfire with government troops outside the presidential residence, leaving at least six people dead. An Associated Press reporter at the scene counted six bodies, and was told that one other person was killed. Ten others were wounded in the fighting.
The fire fight involved troops loyal to clan leader Mohamed Qanyare Afrah and militiamen loyal to the president, who belongs to a rival clan. Qanyare and other clan warlords were meeting with President Abdullahi Yusuf inside the building when the fighting started.
“Gunmen have fired one rocket-propelled grenade at one of the entrances of the presidential palace in villa Somalia. The people in the area have fled,” said Mohammed Said Dore, who was in the area. “Then security forces and Ethiopian troops manning the site exchanged fire with gunmen for around ten minutes. After that the gunmen fled.”
Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia on Dec. 24 to attack the Somali Islamic fundamentalist movement. Most of the Islamic militiamen have dispersed, but a few hardcore members have fled south toward the Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean.
The rout of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, which had controlled much of Somalia for the past six months, has allowed the country’s weak U.N.-backed transitional government to enter the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since it was established in 2004. But restoring order and establishing real authority means overcoming volatile clan rivalries.
Ali Mohammed, a member of the presidential guard, said all of the dead were from Qanyare’s militia and that 10 others had been arrested. He accused the militiamen of trying to force their way into the presidential compound.
Abdiqadir Hussien Hassan, a government official who works inside the compound, said it was not clear what triggered the fighting. But Qanyare has long controlled much of Mogadishu with his clan militia and he has competed with Yusuf in the past.
“The former warlords were discussing security issues in the capital with the president and the prime minister,” government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said. “Today’s meeting was one of several meetings the president and the prime minister have held with clan elders, politicians and civil society groups.”
There have been at least three attacks against government forces and their Ethiopian allies since Tuesday, killing five people, according to eyewitnesses.
The United States, United Nations and the African Union all want to deploy peacekeepers to stop Somalia from returning to clan-based violence and anarchy.
“Deploying an African stabilization force into Somalia quickly is vitally important to support efforts to achieve stability,” U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger said in an opinion piece Friday in Kenya’s Nation Newspaper.
But so far no one on the continent has responded to the call for 8,000 African peacekeepers for Somalia, although Uganda has indicated it is willing to deploy 1,500 peacekeepers as part of a wider mission.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian and U.S. forces were in pursuit of three top al-Qaida suspects, with a senior U.S. official confirming that none of them was killed in a U.S. airstrike and all were believed to be still in Somalia.
The official said U.S. operations were focused solely on tracking down those involved in international terrorism and not Somali Islamic fundamentalists who had challenged Somalia’s internationally recognized government. The official in Kenya was authorized to speak only on condition of anonymity.
In Washington, officials said U.S. special operations forces were in Somalia. Pentagon officials dismissed suggestions they are planning to send large numbers of ground troops.
The U.S. has repeatedly accused the Islamic group of harboring three suspects wanted in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the Horn of Africa nation of 7 million people into chaos. The interim government was established with the help of the United Nations in 2004.
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Associated Press Writers Salad Duhul and Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu, Somalia, Chris Tomlinson in Nairobi, Kenya, Celean Jacobson in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
