MOGADISHU, 23 July 2006 — Gunmen loyal to Somalia’s Islamists fought government forces yesterday in a brief clash some 120 km (74 miles) from the interim government’s base, an Islamist source said, heightening fears of all-out war.
There was no word on casualties in the first fighting between the two sides since Islamists took Mogadishu from US-backed warlords on June 5, challenging the authority of President Abdullahi Yusuf’s Western-backed government.
Government militia seized and set on fire two Islamist “technicals,” heavily-armed pickup trucks, in the fighting in Qoryooley district, the source said.
“I confirm that the clash occurred,” the Mogadishu-based Islamist source, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. Government forces brought one of the Islamists’ technicals back to Baidoa, the government’s temporary provincial base, witnesses in the town said.
Meanwhile, Arab League talks in Sudan, scheduled to resume yesterday, were aimed at easing the situation in Somalia.
The talks fell apart when the Islamists walked out because of the Ethiopian incursion, and the government side said it would not attend until it received international guarantees that any agreement would be respected.
Also yesterday, Ethiopia vowed to “crush” the powerful Somali Islamic Courts, a day after they threatened a holy war against Addis Ababa, which they accuse of sending troops to protect Somalia’s weak interim government.
The warning came as witnesses reported an incursion of Ethiopian troops into a second Somali town close to Baidoa, the seat of the country’s toothless government, ostensibly to protect it from any advance by the Islamists.
Residents in the town of Wajid, some 100 km (60 miles) south of the Somali-Ethiopian border, said about 250 heavily-armed Ethiopian soldiers had arrived there early in the day.
“Ethiopian troops numbering about 250 arrived in Wajid town in Bakol region,” said local resident Ahmed Issa.
“They came in 30 armed vehicles and lorries,” he added.
“The Ethiopian troops arrived early morning in Wajid, with heavily-armed troops securing the area where they camped,” another resident told AFP on condition of anonymity. But a district official in Wajid denied the presence of the troops.
At the same time, Addis Ababa vowed to “crush” the Islamic militia if they dared cross into its territory.
“Ethiopia has made it clear on several occasions that there is a border line they don’t have to cross, if they do they will be crushed,” a senior government official told AFP on conditions of anonymity. Ethiopia and the Somali government have denied any incursion by Addis Ababa’s troops despite numerous eyewitness accounts.
On Thursday and Friday residents of Baidoa, where the government sits for fear of violent unrest in the capital Mogadishu, said they had also spotted Ethiopian troops in their town after the government accused the Islamists of planning an attack.
Meanwhile, a senior Somali government official called for the disarmament of the Islamists, saying they posed a threat to the government that has been unable to exert its authority across the country since relocating from exile in Kenya last year.
