Somalia’s powerful Islamic movement on Thursday claimed Ethiopia had deployed about 12Â 000 troops to help the transitional government as tension soared in the shattered African nation.
A day after peace talks aimed at averting an all-out war collapsed in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, the Islamists said Ethiopian forces were preparing an attack against them.
”We can confirm that there are 12Â 000 Ethiopian forces inside Somali territory. They are going to attack us and take our country and that will not happen by the wishes of Allah,” said Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the head of the Islamists’ executive committee.
Ahmed said the Ethiopian troops were deployed in the Bay and Bakol regions, near the base of the government in Baidoa, about 250km north-west of the capital, Mogadishu.
”We are not going to wait any longer for Ethiopia to take hold of our territory,” Ahmed told thousands of soldiers from the former Somali army, now turned militia forces, in southern Mogadishu.
The Arab League-mediated talks in Khartoum collapsed late on Wednesday after the Islamists refused to meet the government for a face-to-face dialogue until the Ethiopian forces are withdrawn.
The government rejected mediators’ call for a formal postponement, thus putting the talks on indefinite hold.
”Our conditions were justified. We are not going to accept what is not in our interest. We are going to defend our religion and land because Ethiopia is to blame for the collapse of the talks,” Ahmed added.
Largely Christian Ethiopia denies a claim it has as many as 8Â 000 soldiers in Somalia, according to an independent United Nations report, but acknowledges sending military advisers to help protect the government from ”jihadists”, some of whom are accused of links with al-Qaeda.
The Islamists have declared a ”holy war” on the Ethiopians.
At the same time, the government maintains the Islamists are receiving support from Eritrea, which has denied taking sides in Somalia and angrily rejected allegations it has about 2Â 000 troops in that country.
Witnesses reported that rival forces were mounting a 20km no-man’s land separating them near Baidoa as hundreds of civilians in nearby villages fled.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre while a national administration formed in Kenya two years ago has failed to exert its authority.
More than a dozen internationally backed attempts have failed to restore peace in Somalia, a lawless nation of about 10-million people that has also been ravaged by natural calamities, notably famine and floods. — AFP
