Fierce fighting erupted on Friday between forces loyal to Somalia’s weak Ethiopian-backed government and powerful Islamists south of the government’s seat of Baidoa, the two sides said.
Senior government and Islamist officials said the clashes began at midday around Dinsoor, 110km south of Baidoa, with each putting the blame on the other party.
”The Islamists have attacked us and we are defending ourselves,” Deputy Defence Minister Salat Ali Jelle told the media from Baidoa, the only major town the government holds.
”They have been calling for attacks against our troops and today [Friday] they have proven to be real attackers,” he said.
In Mogadishu, about 250km south-east of Baidoa, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, head of the executive wing of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, said ”heavy fighting” was under way in the Dinsoor area.
He told a large crowd after Friday prayers that the battle began when a joint Somali government-Ethiopian force attacked Islamist fighters near Dinsoor, where the two sides have been girding for battle for the past 10 days.
”Our forces have been raided by Ethiopian troops, so people get up and fight against the Ethiopians,” Ahmed said, urging Somalis to join a holy war against Ethiopian troops and oppose a proposed United Nations-authorised peacekeeping mission.
”Stand up and defeat the enemies who have invaded our land,” he told several hundred people protesting the UN Security Council’s adoption on Wednesday of a resolution authorising regional peacekeepers for Somalia.
A senior government commander described the clashes as the ”heaviest of all the recent encounters” with the Islamists.
”I can confirm to you that there is very heavy fighting in the Dinsoor area, but I do not know the casualty figures,” Colonel Abdulsak Afgadud said, declining to comment on the Islamist claims of Ethiopian involvement.
A second government commander said the fighting had reached the village of Safarnooles, about 35km north of Dinsoor.
Residents of Dinsoor could not immediately be reached for comment but an Islamist commander in Somali’s Bay region, where both Dinsoor and Baidoa are located, said the fighting was fierce.
”I don’t have the exact toll, but I am told many people have died,” the commander, Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal, told the media. ”Our Islamic fighters were attacked by a combined force of Ethiopian troops and government militia.”
Ethiopia denies Islamist charges that it has thousands of combat troops in Somalia to protect the government but admits to sending military advisers and trainers.
In Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian government again denied having ground troops in Somalia.
”We have said openly that our troops are not in Somalia, so there is no way we can fight in Somalia,” said Wahide Beleye, a foreign ministry spokesperson. ”We repeat again that we have only trainers in Somalia.
”We don’t fight in Somalia, our troops are inside our borders,” he said.
The reports of fighting in Dinsoor came after Islamist fighters and forces loyal to the pro-government administration in the north-eastern enclave of Puntland traded heavy artillery fire in central Somalia.
At least two people were killed in Bandiradley, about 630km north of Mogadishu, in the artillery exchanges, bringing the death toll to three since the UN authorisation of peacekeepers to aid the government.
The developments pitched the lawless nation closer to all-out war that many fear could spread throughout the Horn of Africa, drawing in Ethiopia and its arch-foe Eritrea, which is accused of backing the Islamists. — AFP
