Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement claimed on Thursday that Ethiopian troops are shelling a Muslim-held town near the two countries’ border and said it had put its forces on alert for an invasion.
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, chairperson of the executive board of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, said the shelling had begun on Wednesday on the town of Beledweyne and had caused unknown casualties.
”Our forces are on high alert because yesterday [Wednesday] Ethiopian soldiers started shelling with mortars and artillery around our bases near Beledweyne, he told a ceremony to inaugurate a new sharia law court in the capital.
”We are telling the world that Ethiopian forces are violating our territory,” Ahmed told the crowd. ”It has been sending thousands of troops to Somalia for the last three days … ”
Beledweyne is about 30 km from the Ethiopian border and 300km north of Mogadishu, which the Islamists seized from warlords in June and have used as base for rapid expansion.
As they have done in the past in response to repeated eyewitness reports of uniformed Ethiopian troops in Somalia, officials in Ethiopia denied the claim, dismissing it as ”propaganda”.
”These reports are unfounded and categorically false,” foreign ministry spokesperson Solomon Abebe told Agence France-Presse in Addis Ababa. ”This is propaganda they are always using, we are not attacking Beledweyne or any other town in Somalia.”
On the weekend, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi again denied sending troops to Somalia, but hinted Addis Ababa would intervene if the Islamists tried to oust the Somali government based in the central town of Baidoa.
Mainly Christian Ethiopia is wary of the rise of the Islamists who it accuses of being ”jihadists” and is backing the transitional government and its calls for the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force.
The Islamists are vehemently opposed to peacekeepers and have vowed to fight any foreign troops on Somali soil.
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority for the past 16 years and the Baidoa government, the latest in more than a dozen international attempts to restore stability, has been unable to assert control.
The Islamists have moved to fill the power vacuum and since taking Mogadishu have expanded their territory to include most of southern and central Somalia, imposing a strict brand of Sharia law in areas they control.
On Thursday in the capital, they inaugurated a new Islamic supreme court that will have jurisdiction over Mogadishu and the surrounding Banadir region to step up the enforcement of sharia law. — AFP
