Somalia’s army, backed by Ethiopian forces, on Sunday extended their grip over remote regions in the far south of the country where Islamist fighters had been holed up for days, a commander said.
Commander Abdulrasaq Afgebub said the joint forces were in control of Ras Kamboni, a scrubland area on the border with Kenya to which the Islamists had retreated after abandoning their last major stronghold in Kismayo, about 50km south of the capital, Mogadishu.
In central Somalia, government troops killed one person after opening fire on demonstrators who were protesting a decision by Ethiopian forces to arrest a police officer who released a top Islamist in the region.
“The mission has been accomplished,” Afgebub told Agence France-Presse. “Government forces have taken control of Ras Kamboni and other areas in the zone where the Islamists were based in the last four days.”
“Our forces, accompanied by our Ethiopian friends, have totally cracked down on the remnants of the Islamists in the border area,” he said, but added that the joint forces were “still tracking some of them who are hiding in the border area forest and we are going to get them”.
“There is no power left for the Islamist terrorists,” Afgebub said, using the term employed by Ethiopia, which justified its lightning war in Somalia on the grounds the Islamic Courts Union represented a threat to its own territory, while Washington accuses their leaders of al-Qaeda links.
The Islamists were forced to abandon their urban strongholds in southern and central Somalia when joint Somali-Ethiopian forces mounted heavy attacks against their rivals in 10 days of battles that erupted on December 20.
Islamist fighters have vowed to wage a guerrilla war to destabilise the weak government and its Ethiopian backers, but no Islamist leaders could be reached on Sunday for comment on the latest government claim.
The presence of Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu has sparked street protests but relative calm returned on Sunday, a day after a teenage boy was killed in a demonstration to denounce their stay and a now-postponed disarmament drive.
In Beledweyne, about 300km north of Mogadishu, Somali forces killed one person and wounded three others at a demonstration to protest the arrest by Ethiopian forces of a police offcial who released Islamist Sheikh Farah Moalim from prison.
“The government forces tried to disperse the people and opened fire and shot one person. He died in the hospital,” said Osman Adan Ares, a Beledweyne resident.
And, overnight on Saturday, gunmen attacked and killed a member of the Islamist movement, while three women were injured in a separate incident after assailants threw grenades into their house.
“The man was going to his house when gunmen opened fire on him. He was left dead at the scene … I think it was not robbery. It was a kind of assassination,” said Mohamed Sheik Adulahi, a neighbour of the deceased.
“This man … was a trainer for the Islamic courts; he used to train militia for the Islamists, but I don’t know why they killed him,” said Abdukadar Hersi, a resident of Mogadishu’s southern Hero-Jarmal district where the incident occurred.
The three women were wounded after their house in the capital’s northern Yakshid came under a grenade attack, witnesses said.
Mogadishu has seen a rise in violence since the arrival of the Ethiopia-backed Somali government forces. The troops forced the Islamists out of the capital, which they had seized from warlords in June, going on to impose order and security by enforcing strict Sharia law.
In Nairobi, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer held talks with maverick Somali Parliament speaker Sherif Hassan Sheikh Aden who riled the government by seeking to negotiate with the Islamists after peace talks collapsed last November. — AFP