Somali elders on Friday pressed for a truce between Islamic militia and a United States-backed warlord alliance after months of deadly violence in the lawless capital, Mogadishu, as gunmen from both sides reinforced positions.
With tension high in Mogadishu and its northern outskirts after yet another day of clashes, elders scurried to secure an elusive ceasefire while Muslims in the city called for massive anti-US protests amid fears of fresh fighting.
”We are contacting both sides involved in the conflict and they say they want peace, but to the contrary, the commanders are preparing themselves for war,” said mediator Ali Hassan.
”They have stationed more fighters at checkpoints and several neighbourhoods in the capital,” he told Agence France-Presse. ”If this dangerous trend continues, Mogadishu will be very bad and the situation will get out of control.”
Witnesses said the factions deployed hundreds of reinforcements and scores of pick-up trucks with mounted machine-guns in volatile areas in and around northern and southern Mogadishu, where the most intense violence has been centred.
Residents of the contested Sisi, Sukahola and Daynile neighbourhoods, all of which remain largely deserted, said the two sides were recruiting hundreds of ill-disciplined freelance fighters, including children.
Although much of Mogadishu appeared calm there were fears that Muslim calls for mass anti-alliance and anti-US demonstrations after Friday’s prayers could spark fresh clashes, they said.
Sukahola, in the north-east, was the scene of the last serious battle in the capital proper, when at least 13 were killed when the Islamists took a key alliance position on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the fighting moved to the towns of Balad and El Arfid on the city’s northern outskirts, where at least three people were killed when the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism (ARPCT) attacked.
Those fatalities brought the death toll from clashes that began in February to 316, with more than 1 500 wounded, many of them civilians, and on Friday the two sides traded blame for the violence.
The ARPCT was set up in February with US support to curb the growing influence of Mogadishu’s 11 Islamic courts and track down extremists and foreign fighters, including al-Qaeda members, they are allegedly harbouring.
The courts, which have declared a holy war against the alliance, deny the accusations and claim the warlords are fighting for the enemy of Islam.
”The courts are here because they promote peace,” said a senior Islamist official. ”We are loved by the community, but we are also under constant attack by uncouth elements paid by the enemy of Islam.”
But ARPCT spokesperson Hussein Gutale Raghe blamed the courts for starting the fighting in a bid to impose foreign and fundamentalist interpretations of Sharia law on the war-shattered nation.
”The Islamic court leaders who started this fighting represent nobody in Somalia,” he said. ”They are funded and supported by foreign fighters. They are not spreading the message of Allah, but a message of hatred.
”True religious leaders do not teach people how use weapons, but these people’s aim is to kill and rule.”
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since 1991 and its largely powerless transitional government has blamed both the alliance and the US for the fighting.
The US 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 told AFP 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. — AFP
