Somalina Posted February 14, 2011 Bloomberg Monday, February 14, 2011 An international commission should be set up to assess whether Somali government soldiers, African Union peacekeepers and insurgents of al-Shabaab have committed war crimes in the capital, Mogadishu, New York-based Human Rights Watch said. “The world has for too long ignored the appalling cost to civilians of the fighting in Mogadishu,” Rona Peligal, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement today. “An international commission of inquiry is urgently needed to investigate war crimes committed in Somalia by all sides.” AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtame Lamamra and his special assistant Braham Khellaf did not respond immediately to e-mailed and telephone requests for a comment. Calls to AU chairman Jean Ping’s spokesman, Noureddine Mezni, did not connect. The Horn of Africa country has been without a functioning central administration since 1991, when ruler Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted. Al-Shabaab, which the U.S. accuses of having links to al-Qaeda, controls most of southern and central Somalia, while the transitional government, led by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, holds parts of Mogadishu. The conflict worsened in August and September when rebels launched an offensive to bring down the government, leading to “indiscriminate attacks of rocket and mortar fire by all parties” and “tens of thousands of civilians” fleeing the capital, Human Rights Watch said. The peacekeepers and government forces regularly respond to rocket attacks by insurgents with a “sustained bombardment” of civilian areas, Human Rights Watch said, citing interviews with refugees at a camp in Daadab in northern Kenya. To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg atpmrichardson@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
