At least five people were killed on the edge of the Somali capital early on Tuesday when Islamic gunmen attacked two positions held by fighters loyal to a warlord, militia sources said.
In addition to the deaths, at least six people were wounded in the battles, the first clashes around the city since Islamists seized control of Mogadishu earlier this month from a United States-backed warlord alliance, they said.
”Two of the dead are members of the Somali police and the other three are civilians,” said Abdi Hassan Qeybdid, the warlord whose positions at Lafole village just south of Mogadishu were seized in the fighting.
He said the attacks were launched by gunmen loyal to the city’s Islamic courts, which have cemented their hold on the city since routing the warlords on June 5 after four months of bloody fighting that killed more than 360.
”We thought the courts were interested in peace, but now I have come to know that this is not the case,” said Qeybdid, a founding member of the now-defunct US-backed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT).
”The courts are more interested in the continuation of violence,” he said.
An Islamist official rejected Qeybdid’s assertions about violence but confirmed that fighters loyal to Mogadishu’s sharia law courts had seized the two positions as part of a bid to pacify the city.
”This is part of our effort to make Somalia a peaceful place and Qeybdid must surrender his weapons to the courts,” the official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity.
An Islamic court announcement read over local radio stations said the posts had been taken because Qeybdid had refused to fully comply with their demands for complete capitulation.
Qeybdid is one of only two ARPCT members to have stayed in Mogadishu since the Islamists took the city. Although he has renounced the alliance, he has thus far refused to cooperate with the courts.
The other, Omar Mohamud Mohamed, the former minister of religious affairs in Somalia’s largely powerless transitional government, has pledged to work with the Islamic courts.
Washington had supported the warlord alliance in a covert operation as part of its larger war on terrorism because of allegations the courts are harbouring extremists, including members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
On Monday, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the new supreme leader of the courts, a hardline cleric designated a terrorist by the United States, vowed that sharia law would be imposed throughout the country.
”We must follow the rule of law as laid down by Allah,” he told AFP in an interview, rejecting the US terrorist designation as ”misplaced” and a ”distortion of the truth”.
Aweys’ selection at the weekend to replace a moderate as the courts’ top official has fuelled concern about a Taliban-like takeover of Somalia and fears it could become a haven and breeding ground for radical Islam and terrorists.
Washington, which has been badly stung by the defeat of the warlords, on Monday ruled out any contact with Aweys, but left the door open to contact with other members of the courts.
”Certainly, of course, we’re not going to work with somebody like that,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said. ”And of course, we would be troubled if this is an indicator of the direction that this group would go in.”
But he said Washington would adopt a wait-and-see attitude before taking a stand on the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC), which was appointed on Saturday with Aweys at its leader to oversee their operations. – Sapa-AFP