Clan gunmen fight govt troops outside presidential palace
Clan gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade and briefly exchanged gunfire with government troops outside the presidential residence in Mogadishu today, leaving at least six dead and 10 wounded.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene counted six dead bodies, and was told that one other person was killed. Ten others were wounded.
The fire fight involved troops loyal to clan leader Mohamed Qanyare Afrah and militiamen loyal to the president, who belongs to a rival clan.
The rout of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, which had controlled most of Somalia for the past six months, by Somali government troops baked by Ethiopian soldiers has allowed the country’s weak UN-backed transitional government to enter the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since it was established in 2004.
But as today’s violence demonstrated, restoring order and establishing real authority means overcoming volatile clan rivalries.
Resentment of Ethiopia’s intervention and remnants of the Islamic movement also were likely to bedevil the government for some time to come.
The United States, United Nations and the African Union all want to deploy peacekeepers to stop Somalia from returning to clan-based violence and anarchy.
Qanyare and other clan warlords today met with President Abdullahi Yusuf inside the building when the fighting started.
“Gunmen have fired one rocket-propelled grenade at one of the entrances of the presidential palace in villa Somalia. The people in the area have fled,” said Mohammed Said Dore, who was in the area.
“Then security forces and Ethiopian troops manning the site exchanged fire with gunmen for around ten minutes. After that the gunmen fled.”
Ali Mohammed, a member of the presidential guard, said all the dead were from Qanyare’s militia and that 10 others had been arrested. He accused the militiamen of trying to force their way into the presidential compound.
Abdiqadir Hussien Hassan, a government official who works inside the compound, said it was not clear what triggered the fighting. But Qanyare has long controlled much of Mogadishu with his clan militia and he has competed with Yusuf in the past.
“The former warlords were discussing security issues in the capital with the president and the prime minister,” government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.
“Today’s meeting was one of several meetings the president and the prime minister have held with clan elders, politicians and civil society groups.”
Since Tuesday there have been at least three attacks against government forces and their Ethiopian allies, killing five people, witnesses in the capital said.
Gunmen threw a grenade into a hotel last night killing a government soldier, Somali lawmaker Jini Boqor, who saw the incident, told The Associated Press.
The hotel is used by Somalia’s police chief.
“Deploying an African stabilisation force into Somalia quickly is vitally important to support efforts to achieve stability,” US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger said in an opinion piece in Kenya’s Nation Newspaper today.
But so far no one on the continent has responded to the call for 8,000 African peacekeepers for Somalia, although Uganda has indicated it is willing to deploy 1,500 peacekeepers as part of a wider mission.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said in a statement on a government website today that US involvement in Somalia is creating turmoil in the Horn of African region and would “incur dangerous consequences.” Eritrea and Ethiopia are bitter rivals.
Late Thursday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the international community to redouble efforts to stabilise Somalia and reiterated his concern that US attacks were harming civilians and could have “unintended consequences.”
Ranneberger said there had been only one US airstrike and no civilians had been injured.
Meanwhile Ethiopian and US forces were in pursuit of three top al Qaida suspects, with a senior US official confirming that none of them was killed in a US airstrike and all were believed to be still in Somalia.
The official said US operations were focused solely on tracking down those involved in international terrorism and not Somali Islamic fundamentalists who had challenged Somalia’s internationally recognised government and were accused of harbouring al Qaida figures.
In Washington, officials said US special operations forces were in Somalia. Pentagon officials dismissed suggestions they are planning to send large numbers of ground troops.
The US Navy has moved additional forces into waters off the Somali coast, where it has conducted security missions, monitoring maritime traffic and intercepting and interrogating crew on suspicious ships in international waters.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the Horn of Africa nation of 7 million people into chaos.
Ethiopia sent troops in on December 24 to attack the Somali Islamic fundamentalist movement.
Most of the Islamic militiamen have dispersed, but a few hardcore members have fled south toward the Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean, and others in hiding in the capital have threatened to wage guerrilla war.
The US has repeatedly accused the group of harbouring three suspects wanted in connection with the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
