This is the result of alshabaab's war on Xamar

[xiinfaniin]

Somalis flee Mogadishu violence

 

 

Anti-government fighters have been battling troops across the capital, Mogadishu [EPA]

 

Thousands of people have fled the Somali capital after scores of people were killed over the weekend.

 

People left Mogadishu in taxis, cars and lorries piled with mattresses, suitcases and furniture on Monday, witnesses said.

 

Ali Sheik Yasin Fadhaa, the vice-chairman of the local Elman Human Rights Organisation, said: "Some of them do not know where to go. They need urgent help."

 

He said that his staff throughout Mogadishu had counted at least 5,200 people fleeing on Monday, taking the total since Saturday to more than 17,000 Somalis.

 

"I have no other option," Asha Yakob told The Associated Press news agency as she left the northern Mogadishu neighbourhood of Fagah.

 

"Those who are fighting seem to be foreigners. If they were Somalis, they would never kill innocent and poor people like me. They are enemies."

 

Heavy fighting

 

Heavy clashes were reported between troops and anti-government fighters in Fagah early on Monday.

 

"The fighting is very heavy and both sides are using machine-guns and anti-aircraft weapons," Mohamed Abdi, a police officer, said.

 

Later a mortar shell landed near a cafe in the north of the capital killing at least two civilians, witnesses said.

 

In video

 

Scores killed in fresh Mogadishu fighting

 

The latest fighting is the heaviest in months.

 

Anti-government groups have vowed to defeat the interim government of Sharif Ahmed, the president and former leader of the Islamic Courts Union, which controlled much of Somalia for several months in 2006.

 

"The onslaught against the government is being led by Hizb ul-Islam and al-Shaabab," Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow reported from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.

 

"They may have different views on how to run Somalia, but they are now united in knocking Sheikh Sharif [Ahmed] from power."

 

"They are saying he has betrayed them and has betrayed the cause of the Somali mujahidins

 

"They say he has sided with what is seen as the side of the Ethiopian government and the United States."

 

Deteriorating situation

 

Sheikh Bashir Ahmed Salad, chairman of a religious panel trying to mediate between the two sides, said they were concerned over the deteriorating situation.

 

"We had been contacting both sides in the past week to avoid bloodshed, but they ignored our calls and engaged in fighting that led to civilian casualties," he said.

 

In depth

 

Timeline of Somalia

Restoring Somalia

A long road to stability

 

Ahmed has blamed foreign governments trying to destabilise the Horn of Africa nation for supporting the anti-government fighters.

 

"We have an Islamic government, but misled Somalis kill innocent people. These guys work for foreign countries that do not want us to be a peaceful nation," he said.

 

"I tell them to stop fighting. It is illegal to shed the blood of your innocent brothers."

 

Ahmed has been trying to broker peace with warring groups, but his administration wields little control outside Mogadishu and needs support from African Union peacekeepers.

 

Fighters opposed to the government see the 4,350 AU peacekeepers as "foreign invaders" and an obstacle to a lasting peace.

[xiinfaniin]

Somali government encircled by hardline Islamists

 

After five days of assault by better-armed Al Shabab militiamen, pro-government fighters have apparently begun to retreat.

 

 

By Scott Baldauf

 

Nairobi, Kenya - Somali Islamist leader and onetime president Sheikh Dahir Aweys has launched what appears to be a final assault on the fragile Somali transitional government.

 

Five days of fighting, including heavy shelling, have left dozens dead, almost certainly ending hopes for negotiations to potentially win over Sheikh Aweys's support for, and inclusion in, the moderate Islamist government of president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. Both men had served in the short-lived Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) government of 2006, before it was removed by an Ethiopian military intervention.

 

The assault casts serious doubt over the survival of the Sharif government, just days after international donors pledged $213 million to support it. At present, forces loyal to Sharif control roughly 25 city blocks in Mogadishu, including the presidential palace. About 4,000 African Union peacekeeping troops also protect the Sharif government, the seaport, and the Mogadishu airport.

 

"There is no doubt Aweys wants a military solution. He wants to dislodge Sharif," says Rashid Abdi, an expert on Somalia for the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. "They're shelling the presidential palace and parts of the airport. This is looking like the final assault."

 

Witnesses say the fighting in Mogadishu is reminiscent of fighting in the early 1990s, in the scrum for power among warlords that followed the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991. As many as 60 people have been killed and 250 injured. Five thousand fighters loyal to the hardline Islamist militia Al Shabab have been sent to Mogadishu from as far away as the southern port city of Kismayo. Fighters of another hardline Islamist group Hizbul Islam have joined the assault on Sharif's government as well.

 

Government forces in retreat

 

After five days of assault by better-armed Al Shabab fighters, pro-government fighters have apparently begun to retreat into areas under control of the African Union peacekeepers.

 

From the Villa Somalia, the presidential palace, Sheikh Sharif said on Monday that his government is still working toward a peaceful solution of the crisis, treating Aweys's military assault as nothing more than a hard bargaining position.

 

"We tell the Somali people that the government is making efforts to stop the fighting and work for the interest of the people, but unfortunately people who have made a career of war and do not want a government are wreaking havoc in the country," Sharif told reporters on Monday. "The government is committed to holding free elections and to avoid taking power by the gun. The reason they [opposition] are fighting us is to overthrow our government and to prevent the creation of an effective government."

 

Hours after the press conference, the presidential palace itself was shelled.

 

Why hardliners reject the current government

 

Hardline Islamists say they reject the Sharif government, despite the fact that Sharif won overwhelming support from Somali clans and traditional leaders during a UN-sponsored election held in Djibouti on Jan. 31.

 

Sharif's credentials as a former Islamist commander during the Islamist government of 2006 were thought to have given him the best chance of buying Somalia enough time to restore peace, open up humanitarian corridors for aid delivery, and allow for peaceful elections at a later time. Sharif was applauded both for reaching out to fellow Islamists – and having parliament make Islamic law the basis for Somalia's legal system – as well as to Western donor nations eager to see Somalia's nearly 19 years of anarchy brought to an end.

 

Sharif even welcomed back Aweys, the former head of the UIC, hoping the two could resolve their differences by negotiation. That appears to have failed.

 

Donor nations wary of getting involved

 

International assistance for the Sharif government is limited, in part by design. Based on the disastrous US-led UN peacekeeping mission of the early 1990s – culminating in the frenzied street fighting depicted in the book "Black Hawk Down" – donor nations passed the most recent Somali peacekeeping mission on to the African Union in 2006. Yet even the African-led peacekeeping mission has been divisive and potentially destabilizing, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon argued last month.

 

Now, the question is how will this African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) force, composed of Burundians and Ugandans, will hold up against a full Al Shabab assault.

 

"I don't think that if pushed, AMISOM will go the extra mile to protect Sharif," says Rashid Abdi, of Crisis Group.

 

Sharif's best hope is an internal solution, most experts agree, by winning over enough Islamist militias to his side, including the popular but poorly armed traditional Islamist group Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a.

 

In Nairobi, Ahlu Sunna's political spokesman, Khaliph Mahamud Abdi, says his group has been talking with the Sharif government but will only join Sharif's forces if he promises to stop trying to cooperate with all foreign Islamic ideologies, especially the hardline Saudi-influenced ideology of Al Shabab, but instead to eliminate them.

 

Ahlu Sunna claims to control a broad swath of territory north of Mogadishu, including much of the Galcayo and Gedo regions. But while he says, "We have the people and we have the truth," he warns darkly, "They (Al Shabab) have the money and the organization."

 

"We are supposed to meet Sharif, and if he is willing to join us we will give him all the land we control and give him our forces, too," says Mr. Abdi, the Ahlu Sunna spokesman.

 

Source: The Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 2009

[xiinfaniin]

Thousands flee Mogadishu as death toll hits 113

 

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

 

MOGADISHU, May 12 (Reuters) - Thousands of residents fled bomb-blasted parts of northern Mogadishu on Tuesday and a local rights group said the Somali capital's heaviest fighting for months had killed 113 civilians.

 

The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said battles between hardline Islamist rebels from the al Shabaab group and pro-government forces had also wounded 330 people in the failed Horn of Africa state since the end of last week.

 

It said at least 27,000 civilians had fled the city.

 

The bloodshed has caused splits in both heavily armed sides: there was a deadly clash on Monday between police and soldiers, then a rift broke out in the opposition after a veteran warlord stoked rivalries between two insurgent factions.

 

Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, also known as "Inda'ade" or "white eyes", handed control of his hundreds of fighters and 19 battle wagons -- pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons -- to Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, another senior opposition leader.

 

That angered Shabaab leaders, who are also fighting the country's fragile new government. Washington accuses both Aweys and the Shabaab group of having links to al Qaeda.

 

"Shabaab wants to behead Sheikh Yusuf," said a relative of Inda'ade, Aden Hussein. "They ordered Sheikh Hassan to give up him and his weapons, but Aweys said he prefers to fight Shabaab."

 

One of Aweys' bodyguards told Reuters tensions were high.

 

"Shabaab and Sheikh Hassan are deadlocked. I can't talk much ... the situation is serious," he said, declining to be named.

 

The influential Aweys is a member of Hizbul Islam, an umbrella group of opposition organisations that includes his Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia.

 

Tuesday's split came a day after six government troops were killed by police who said they clashed after catching the soldiers smuggling weapons to the insurgents.

 

On Monday, new Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed accused the rebels of working for unnamed foreign governments he said were determined to undermine his administration. [iD:nLB035132]

 

Somalia has been in chaos since 1991 when warlords toppled strongman Mohamed Siad Barre before turning on each other.

 

More than 16,000 civilians have been killed by fighting since the start of 2007, more than 1 million have been driven from their homes and about 3 million survive on food aid.

 

Source: Reuters, May 12, 2009

[Emperor]

Nairobi, Kenya - Somali Islamist leader and onetime president Sheikh Dahir Aweys has launched what appears to be a final assault on the fragile Somali transitional government.

When did Hassan Dahir become president? Lool, Nimankaan aad soo tibisay Xiinow warba mahayaan!

[Taleexi]

Emperor, Shucuurtoodii shaqsiyadeed iyo tii hab warbaahineedka baa iskaga dhex yaacday, bal mar u qalee, haddayse soo celceliyaan warkaa axalka leh, garla'aawayaal, hiilis xumo ku darsaday iga "dheh"

[xiinfaniin]

Emp,

Reuters is a major news source. It got wrong that unnecessary detail in the reporting, however. The tragedy in Xamar is the real news, not what Xassan D was or was not.

[Emperor]

^OK Xiin-ow

 

Mansa, right bro, read more and trust less