sovereign risk

Fighting intensifies in Somalia's capital

Monday, July 10, 2006 Posted: 1558 GMT (2358 HKT)


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Manage Alerts | What Is This? MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Somalia's Islamic militia intensified its battle against a pocket of resistance in the capital Monday, pounding Mogadishu with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in fighting that has killed more than 40 people in two days.

The surge in violence broke weeks of relative calm under the rule of the Islamic fighters, who have grown increasingly radical since wresting Mogadishu from secular warlords last month and establishing strict courts based on the Quran.

"The war was inevitable because nobody can have authority in the city beyond the Islamic Courts," Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a top Islamic official, said Monday.

Mortar shells and gunfire were slamming the city, sending residents into homes and shops or fleeing Mogadishu altogether. The militia has been trying to quash supporters of Abdi Awale Qaybdiid, a warlord who refused to disarm.

At least 25 people were killed Monday and 20 died Sunday, according to hospital officials who said the death toll was likely to rise.

"People are having difficulty reaching hospitals because of road blocks," doctor Abdi Ibrahim Jiya told The Associated Press.

Somalia has been without an effective government since warlords overthrew its longtime dictator in 1991 and divided the nation into fiefdoms. The Islamic fundamentalists have stepped into the vacuum as an alternative military and political power.

The volatile nation in the Horn of Africa has been a particular concern to the United States, which has long-standing concerns that Somalia will become a refuge for members of Osama bin Laden's terror network, much like Afghanistan did in the late 1990s.

U.S. officials cooperated with the warlords, hoping to capture three al Qaeda leaders allegedly protected by the Islamic council, especially three men accused in the deadly 1998 bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But the Islamists prevailed, taking the United States by surprise and further marginalizing the country's interim government. The interim body was established with the help of the United Nations but is powerless outside its base in Baidoa, 90 miles (150 kilometers) from Mogadishu.

The two sides signed a nonaggression agreement at a June 22 meeting in Sudan, but relations have deteriorated since then. A meeting was scheduled Saturday in Sudan under Arab League auspices to negotiate a full peace accord between the government and the Islamic fighters.

But Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said the government won't take part in peace talks involving the group's radical leader, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys. "We will not sit with radical members of the Islamic Courts; we will sit with those who are moderates," he said.

The militia has forbidden movies, television and music in line with their strict interpretation of Islam. Last week, militiamen in central Somalia fatally shot two people at the screening of a World Cup soccer broadcast that was banned because it violated the fighters' strict interpretation of Islamic law.

A recent recruiting video issued by militia members showed foreign militants fighting alongside them and invited Muslims from around the world to join in their "holy jihad."

On Monday, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said the tape was "false and fabricated" and blamed it on the United States. "It is nothing but the Bush administration's false information, which they use to mislead the world," he said.