MOGADISHU, 11 July 2006 — Rival Somali fighters yesterday pounded each other with heavy artillery rounds as a deadly battle resumed in Mogadishu, after Islamic militants attacked gunmen loyal to a secular warlord who has refused to surrender.
At least 28 people were killed yesterday, including fighters for warlord Abdi Hassan Awale Qeydiid and for the Islamic Courts as well as civilians hit by stray rounds of machine gunfire, mortar and rockets in the south of the capital, residents and militia commanders told AFP.
“The fighting will continue until Qeydiid surrenders and obeys the (orders) of God, which says power should be given to those who fear Allah,” said Ahmed Farah, one of its commanders.
Hundreds of terrified civilians fled the battlefield mainly around K4, K5, 6-Piano neighborhoods as well as Mogadishu Gaheyr University, said Muslima Ali, a resident in the area.
Another resident who drove some of the injured to hospital said “two civilians passed away steps before they reached Madinah hospital while four other militiamen died in the vicinity,” said Ahmed Mohamed Dhobe.
In Nairobi, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni, all members of the seven-nation east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), called on the international community to help deploy peacekeepers.
In recent weeks, IGAD officials have complained that the international community, notably Western powers, have been non-committal on the Somalia conflict, thus complicating regional efforts to restore a functional government there.
The Somali fighting raged as the Islamic Courts renewed an appeal to the warlord to surrender and avoid further violence in the blood-soaked capital.
“We call on Qeydiid to surrender to spare young militiamen’s (lives),” Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a top official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, told a press conference in a Mogadishu hotel.
But the warlord said he was first provoked by the Islamists who dislodged him from his territory in Afgoi, about 30 kilometers southwest of the capital on June 27.
“I am defending myself from aggression that has been waged toward my team since June 27,” he told AFP.
On Sunday, the Islamists attacked the warlord’s positions sparking deadly clashes that forced Qeydiid to flee from his tiny stronghold, only to reappear again yesterday, despite an announcement from the Islamists that they had rid the capital of warlords.
The latest unrest brings the toll to at least 417 dead and more than 2,100 wounded in fighting which first erupted on Feb. 18 when Washington formed a warlords alliance and assigned it to curb the growing influence of the Islamists, who are accused of links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network and harboring foreign fighters.
But the Islamists, who control swathes of southern Somalia, vanquished the US-backed warlords, routing them from the capital on June 5. Several warlords either defected or fled.
The Islamists have vehemently rejected Western charges, but their steady imposition of Shariah law across the overwhelmingly moderate Muslim country has led many to see it as a direct challenge to Somalia’s largely powerless transitional government, based in Baidoa, about 250 kilometers from Mogadishu.
Stung by loss of territorial control, Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aidid, also a warlord whose fighters have been ousted, demanded the Islamists abandon territories they seized in Mogadishu and be excluded from peace talks with the government expected to resume in Khartoum on Saturday.
Instead, he said the government was ready to meet other branches of the Islamic Courts, such as civil groups and businessmen who were not involved the violence, casting a pall on hopes that the Arab League mediated talks would bear fruit.
But the Islamists dismissed government concerns and asked its officials to keep away from affairs happening in Mogadishu.
“If the officials from the government reject peace talks, then it is up to them. But for us, we are always for peace and dialogue without preconditions,” Ahmed said.
US officials have described the Islamists’ increasing control in Somalia as “creeping Talebanization,” with extremist practices taking hold, including public executions, the banning of bands at wedding parties, the lashing of offenders in public, outlawing Western and Indian films as well as making it compulsory to perform daily prayers.
