MOGADISHU, 1 April 2007 — Heavy artillery fire shook the Somali capital yesterday for the third consecutive day, barring residents from leaving their homes as Ethiopian troops fought pitched battles against Islamist insurgents.
Following a brief lull overnight, explosions began anew at 2:30 a.m. (2330 GMT Friday) with fresh casualties piling up in Mogadishu’s streets, already littered with corpses in the worst fighting the city has seen in 15 years.
“We don’t know where to go. We are trapped in our houses and dead bodies are lying in the street,” a resident in the southern Ali Kamin area, Ibrahim Duale, told AFP. “There is no chance of taking the wounded and dead people because of the heavy artillery and anti-aircraft weapons. It is still continuing and we cannot tell exactly the number of dead. I have seen at least seven bodies and they all lived in the neighborhood,” he said. Fighting intensified in Mogadishu on Friday when rebels shot down an Ethiopian helicopter gunship, killing the two-man crew, while the Ethiopian government claims its offensive has taken the lives of 200 insurgents. Cityscapes in the lawless seaside capital have sustained heavy damage, as buildings collapsed into piles of rubble and smoke.
“The whole area is demolished, totally demolished,” another despairing resident, Ali Hassan, said. “You can see smoke coming out of everywhere and people are confused. They don’t have anywhere to run.”
The Ethiopians launched their offensive Thursday against the remnants of an Islamist movement it helped the Somali transitional government topple earlier this year but which has continued to carry out guerrilla-style attacks.
The fighting shattered a feeble six-day cease-fire with the powerful Hawiye clan which has controlled Mogadishu since the 1991 ouster of Siad Barre. The death toll was the highest since the start of the year, with an AFP count yesterday based on witness and hospital reports bringing the number to 62 dead since Thursday.
Expressing concern over the high number of civilian casualties, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement: “The population of Mogadishu is caught up in the worst fighting in more than 15 years.” “We have never seen such fighting, it’s the worst ever seen in Mogadishu,” resident Habibo Hassan told AFP by telephone. “I heard that neighbors had been killed but I cannot go out to look, I’m just using the phone,” Hassan said.
The downing of the helicopter and the dragging of dead soldiers through the streets this past week carried dark echoes of a failed UN-backed US peace operation in Somalia in the early 1990s. The attempt to assert power in the failed state is the latest of 14 efforts to restore a functional government in Somalia. In a statement released yesterday, Human Rights Watch accused the governments of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and the United States of secretly detaining hundreds of people fleeing the deadly conflict in Somalia. “Each of these governments has played a shameful role in mistreating people fleeing a war zone,” said Georgette Gagnon, HRW’s deputy Africa director.
“Kenya has secretly expelled people, the Ethiopians have caused dozens to disappear, and US security agents have routinely interrogated people held incommunicado,” he added.
The rights panel detailed “arbitrary detention, expulsion and apparent enforced disappearance of dozens of individuals who fled the fighting” between Ethiopia-backed Somali troops and the powerful Islamist movement from December through January 2007.
Abdullahi Ahmed Gedi, a crippled Somali man, was cowering in a Mogadishu alley with his family when a mortar round came crashing down on them. His wife was killed and his daughter wounded. As his brother raced to their rescue, they were all hit again.
“We were all hiding in a corner when the shelling struck us the first time,” Gedi told Reuters, staring at the ground in shock. “Then we were hit again, killing my daughter and my brother who had come to take us to safety.” Sitting outside the capital’s main hospital, Madina, Gedi was one of hundreds of traumatized residents seeking help on the third day of a major offensive by Ethiopian and government forces against Islamist insurgents and clan militia.
With artillery duels smashing buildings and gunbattles raging down the streets, civilians have been the main victims. The hospital’s compound was overflowing with casualties yesterday. Many lay in the open, and throughout the decrepit building maimed children and adults screamed in pain.
