Posted on 05/27/2006 8:23:04 PM PDT by Flavius
MOGADISHU (AFP) - Deadly fighting has flared on in the lawless Somali capital Mogadishu as Islamic militia and gunmen loyal to a US-backed warlord alliance engaged for the seventh day in what residents described as the heaviest clashes.
At least eight people -- seven civilians and a militiaman -- were killed in the northern Mogadishu district of Sisi, bringing the death toll to at least 108 since fighting erupted in the war-shattered capital on Sunday, witnesses said.
In addition two overnight deaths, five more civilians were killed and 17 wounded in the volatile Sisi neighbourhood, where residents said the violence had escalated and displaced thousands of people.
"Today we have seen violence that we have never experienced in the past one week," resident Mohamed Jumale told AFP Saturday.
"Five people have been killed and many more are unaccounted for as a result of clashes that are going on," Jumale said. Witnesses said a militiaman was also killed.
They said sporadic gunfire was heard in across Huriwa, Waharaade and Yaqshid districts in north and south of the blood-soaked capital where the militia have also engaged in fighting.
The fighting has wounded more than 250 people, mostly civilians, straining hospitals here, medical sources said.
"The warring sides are not targeting civilians directly, but most people are killed by stray bullets, mortars or heavy machineguns coming into their shanty houses penetrating the poorly constructed walls," said Mohmamed Hirsi, an elderly man who fled from Sisi.
Accounts of the death toll have varied widely, but the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), which runs hospitals in the city with the Somali Red Crescent, estimated on Thursday that about 80 people had been killed.
A spokesman for the alliance, Hussein Gutale Raghe, said on Friday he believed the death toll stood at at least 150 and perhaps more but there was no way to independently verify the figures and families say many more people are still unaccounted for.
But long-time Mogadishu residents said militiamen usually bury their dead at night to avoid revealing their losses.
"Militiamen bury their dead overnight and it is difficult to know how many were killed during the darkness," said one resident, requesting to remain unnamed. "But civilian casualty is always visible."
At least 70 percent of the population in the worst affected districts are believed to have fled their homes under intense machine gun, rocket and mortar fire that has rained down on residential areas causing indiscriminate damage.
The death toll has now surpassed that from an earlier wave of unrest over three days in February and four days in March when at least 85 people were killed as the two factions fought each other.
Those incidents had been the bloodiest clashes in the capital since Somalia collapsed into anarchy 15 years ago.
The fighting has continued despite appeals for calm by the United Nations, United States and Somalia's largely powerless transitional government, currently based in the town of Baidoa, about 250 kilometres (155 kilometres) west of Mogadishu.
Their appeals and a truce offer from the Islamic clerics who control the militia have been dismissed by the warlord-led Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT).
"I am appealing and begging the warring sides in Mogadishu to show a sense of humanity and stop the war," influential Somali parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden told reporters in Nairobi.
The alliance has vowed to curb the power of the courts that have gained popular backing by restoring some stability to areas in Mogadishu they control through the imposition of Sharia law.
It also accuses the courts of harboring terrorists and training foreign fighters on Somali soil, charges that Islamic leaders deny but that are also leveled by the US and other Western nations.
Although Washington has not explicitly confirmed its support for the alliance, US officials have told AFP the group has received US money and is one of several it is working with to contain the threat of Islamic radicals.
05/13/2006 08:49
same scenario, another forsaken land
Islam vs the rest of the World, continued (until the rest of the world wakes up).
I suggest we send Bill Clinton to Negotiate in Person!
Actually it was the first President Bush that went there for "humanitarian reasons."
Somalia Islamic militia after capturing the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, May 25, 2006. (Shabele Media/Handout/Reuters)
Somalia Islamic militia guard Sahafi Hotel after it was captured from those of the counter terrorism alliance in Somalia capital Mogadishu, May 25, 2006. Fresh clashes between rival Somali militias spread across Mogadishu on Thursday, killing up to 30 more people in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation's worst violence for years, witnesses said. REUTE
Somalia fundamentalist leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys inside a mosque in northern Mogadishu Wednesday Oct. 12, 2005. A surge in the power of Islamic fundamentalist warlords in Somalia is raising fears that the Horn of Africa nation could follow the path of Taliban Afghanistan into the hands of al-Qaida, despite Western efforts to stop it. The U.S. government says Aweys has connections to al-Qaida. (AP Photo/Osman Hassan)
Gunmen keep guard as thousands of people gather to listen to the speaker of the Somali parliament, Shariif Hassan Sheikh Aden, unseen, in this Sunday, Feb. 6, 2005 picture in Mogadishu, Somalia. A surge in the power of Islamic fundamentalist warlords in Somalia is raising fears that the Horn of Africa nation could follow the path of Taliban Afghanistan into the hands of al-Qaida, despite Western efforts to stop it. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)
MEALS ON WHEELS
BJ Clinton
1993
Remember Blackhawk Down?
Stir your Shit somewhere else
TT
In his December 4, 1992, address to the nation officially announcing Operation Restore Hope, President Bush stressed both the humanitarian purpose and the limited nature of the U.S. military intervention in Somalia:
"Our mission has a limited objective--to open the supply routes, to get the food moving, and to prepare the way for a U.N. peace-keeping force to keep it moving. This operation is not open-ended. We will not stay longer than is absolutely necessary."
Stir your Shit somewhere else
I'm not stirring up anything. Just posting the facts.
There are three rules about getting involve in a civil war. One - pick a side; Two - pick the winning side; Three - if you cannot meet rule one and two, do not get involve.
yes no one cared about afganistan either before 911
thats the point
i dont care either but for some reason al qaida decided to make a stand there
most likely because they know news media will help them keep our troops out officially
th
I'm with you--my giveadamn for that place is busted.
If you need profanity to make a point, then it's useless to carry on this discussion.
Please. I've been a conservative when you were still breast-feeding.
al-Quida is afraid of AIAI, the Somali Whahabbi front, as they dont really take orders from anyone. They are more concerned with what is happening down the street, not in America.
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