At least 12 people were killed and 11 wounded on Monday when Somali police clashed with gunmen for control of the airport in the government seat of Baidoa, officials and witnesses said.
The fighting erupted as members of the weak transitional administration met with Somalia’s powerful Islamic movement in Sudan but was unrelated to the peace talks, although it underscored instability in the lawless nation.
Police said they had moved on the Baidoa airport to evict militia fighters who had set up shop there, imposing taxes and recruiting cronies into their ranks after having been dismissed as airport security workers.
”Twelve people have been killed, seven militiamen and five from the government security,” Baidoa police official Omar Aden Abdulle said from the town, about 250km north-west of Mogadishu.
Baidoa resident Mohamed Abukar said bodies of the dead were lying at the airport as police took up positions around the facility in the aftermath of the gun battle.
”I saw seven bodies at the airport,” he said. ”All of them were uniformed, but I couldn’t tell if they were from the government or the gunmen.”
Witnesses said police were evacuating their casualties from the airport and authorities were unwilling to discuss specific details of the incident.
Government spokesperson Abdirahman Mohamed Nur Dinari said police had been ordered to seize control of the airport and that casualty figures from the fire fight had been far lower than reported by others.
”They moved to the airport to stop activities that were undermining the smooth running of the facility,” he said, maintaining there had been no deaths and only three injuries from the clash.
”As of now, the airport is in the hands of the government,” Dinari said.
The fighting came on the third day of talks in Khartoum aimed at easing tensions between the largely powerless government and newly dominant Islamists, which threaten to plunge the anarchic country into further chaos.
The Islamists, who seized Mogadishu from warlords in June and have rapidly expanded their territory to include much of southern Somalia, pose a growing threat to the limited authority of the internationally backed government.
Arab League mediators are attempting to broker a compromise between the two sides, who are deeply split over several key issues, including the proposed deployment of regional peacekeepers.
They are also at odds over the reported presence in Somalia of Ethiopian troops, denied by Addis Ababa, allegedly sent to the country to protect the government from feared Islamist attacks.
On Sunday, the government proposed integrating its security units with Islamic militia to form a new national armed force as part of a power-sharing scheme. The Islamists have yet to respond to the idea.
The Islamists — whose rise has fuelled fears of a Taliban-style takeover of Somalia — claim their battlefield successes entitle them to form their own government, but say they recognise the legitimacy of the administration.
As both sides discussed security in Khartoum on Monday, top Islamic courts official Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed continued to hold talks with Kenyan officials ahead of a regional summit on Somalia in Nairobi this week.
Plans for the deployment of peacekeepers, which are now on hold, are to be at the top of the agenda for that meeting, with the Islamists holding to threats to resist any foreign troops sent to the country.
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre plunged the Horn of Africa nation into chaos, raising concerns it could become a haven for terrorists.
The current transitional government is the latest in more than a dozen internationally backed attempts that have thus far failed to restore stability to the country of about 10-million people. — Sapa-AFP