Somali gunmen fired at a convoy of Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu in the latest attack on forces backing the government, threatening efforts to restore effective rule in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.
Saying Mogadishu was ”in chaos”, President Abdullahi Yusuf appointed officials on Monday to take charge of the city where Somali troops, backed by Ethiopian forces, ousted Islamists in a lightning December offensive.
The attack was late on Sunday in the northern Arafat area where Ethiopian soldiers had helped government troops seize guns and explosives hours earlier.
”Two Ethiopian trucks were hit,” a Somali government source said. ”Thirty minutes of heavy fighting followed. There are deaths on both sides.” The source said three Somalis were killed in the shoot-out.
”There were four lorries, when one of them passed the gunmen started firing at the other three,” witness Aden Mohamoud Gedi said. ”At least one Ethiopian soldier was injured. The Ethiopians also killed a mentally ill man who did not heed their orders to stop.”
He said Ethiopian soldiers later came back to clear the damage.
It was not clear who carried out the attack in a city where much of the population has guns, although suspicion will fall on Islamist remnants who have vowed guerrilla war.
Al-Qaeda’s deputy leader has urged the Islamists to launch an Iraq-style insurgency against Ethiopian troops.
Somali gunmen have fired at Ethiopian soldiers several times this month and crowds have hurled stones and burnt tyres to demonstrate against them.
Militia loyal to warlords have also started returning to Mogadishu since the Islamists fled the capital late last month.
Ethiopia wants to withdraw its soldiers in the coming weeks but diplomats fear that would leave the government vulnerable to the Islamists, who have threatened a guerrilla war, and warlords seeking to re-create fiefdoms.
The government is seeking to install itself in Mogadishu — one of the world’s most dangerous cities — and faces a huge challenge to bring peace and security to a nation without effective central rule since a dictator was ousted in 1991.
Fears of slide back into anarchy
Yusuf on Monday appointed a mayor and three other officials to administer the capital.
”We see the city is in chaos. It’s not safe,” he said.
One of the government’s main challenges is to disarm residents of a city awash with guns. On Saturday, Somalia’s Parliament declared a three-month state of emergency.
Residents fear Mogadishu could slide back into the anarchy that gripped the city after 1991 and await to see whether the government can impose the relative stability experienced under the Islamists’ strict six-month rule.
Warlords agreed on Friday to merge their forces into a new national army to tame the country.
Somalia’s government wants African peacekeepers to be deployed as soon as possible and African Union officials arrived in Somalia this weekend to finalise plans for the force.
The African Union’s Peace and Security Council has agreed to increase the number of troops from a proposed 8 000-strong deployment and urged the international community to fund the peace mission.
Uganda is ready to provide the first battalion, but needs its Parliament’s approval. Kenya, chair of regional body Igad, has sent top officials to several African nations to seek support for the force.
United States forces killed up to 10 al-Qaeda allies in Somalia on January 8 but Washington said they missed the main targets. The strike was the first overt US military involvement in Somalia since a disastrous peacekeeping mission ended in 1994. — Reuters