Mogadishu residents cautiously returned to their homes on Monday, taking advantage of a lull in fierce factional fighting to pick through rubble-strewn neighbourhoods in the capital.
With tension still high amid fears of a new surge in deadly street battles between Islamic militia and a United States-backed warlord alliance, elders scurried between the two sides seeking to arrange a formal truce.
But as a tentative calm settled over neighbourhoods where the fighting was most intense, heavily armed gunmen continued to patrol the streets and residents said fresh hostilities could erupt at any time.
”Guns are ready to be fired,” said Hassan Abdullahi, a resident of Mogadishu’s southern Daynile district, which along with K4 in the south and Galgalato and Sisi in the north have been the bloodiest battlegrounds.
”There is no gunfire and I haven’t seen any violence but the level of militia presence has not gone down,” said resident Dahir Abdulle Alasow after inspecting the four neighborhoods by car.
At 62 people have been killed and hundreds wounded, most of them civilians, in the latest round of fighting that began on Wednesday, worsened on Thursday and then exploded on Saturday, when 30 died, before the latest lull.
The casualties brought the death toll from a series of increasingly intense battles between the two sides to at least 274 since February in the bloodiest fighting the lawless capital has seen in years.
War-weary residents, thousands of whom fled their houses, nervously trekked to their homes to inspect damage from the heavy machine-gun, artillery, mortar and rocket fire that pounded their neighbourhoods at the height of the clashes.
”Some want to check whether their houses were looted or not, some want to see if their homes were destroyed by stray mortars or artillery,” said construction worker Abdurahman Olad.
In some areas, however, there was no hope of salvaging either property or possessions, residents said.
”I came here to sell fuel for cars but my heart is shaky because of what we saw on Wednesday,” said Maryann, a resident of K4, which was the scene of heavy exchanges betweeen the two sides last week.
”This area was like hell, but by the grace of Allah, many of us survived,” she said.
As she and others sifted through the rubble, elders scrambled to mediate a permanent truce and there were new appeals from outside the country for peace and for the two sides to avoid civilian areas.
”The warring parties must spare the lives of those not involved in the hostilities and to take all the necessary measures to prevent unnecessary human suffering,” said Eric Laroche, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
He warned the two sides not to interfere in any humanitarian operations in the city or deny the wounded access to medical care, saying such actions were illegal and could be prosecuted.
”Any deliberate attempt to prevent wounded or civilians receiving assistance and protection during fighting in the city may constitute elements of future war crimes,” Laroche said in a statement.
The fighting pits Islamists against the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT), set up in February with US backing to curb the growing influence of Islamic courts and track down extremists, including al-Qaeda members, they are allegedly harboring.
The courts, which have declared a holy war against the alliance, deny the accusations.
Somalia’s largely powerless transitional government, based in Baidoa about 250km north-west of Mogadishu, has blamed both the alliance and the United States for the fighting.
The United States denies responsibility for the clashes although it has refused to confirm or deny its support for the ARPCT.
But US officials and informed Somali sources have said that Washington has given money to the ARPCT, one of several groups it is working with to curb what it says is a growing threat from radical Islamists in Somalia. – Sapa-AFP