Hundreds of Ethiopian troops entered the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Monday, witnesses said, after four days of heavy fighting with Islamist rebels that left scores dead and forced thousands to flee.
The worst fighting in Mogadishu in more than 15 years was triggered by an Ethiopian offensive last week against fighters from the Islamist movement ousted from the capital in late December and clan gunmen.
Residents on the outskirts of the embattled port city said fresh Ethiopian forces had entered the capital on the road from Baidoa, about 250km to the north-west, where the interim Somali Parliament is based.
Although fighting dropped in intensity on Monday, Ethiopian troops shot dead four Somali civilians, according to witnesses, and many continued to flee, reporting acute shortages of food and water.
Dozens of rotting bodies littered the streets, and many houses lay empty.
”I think the fighting will surge again because the warring sides are now facing off,” said Mohamed Abdi, a resident leaving Ali Kamin neighbourhood, scene of the fiercest fighting. ”We have no option but to flee.”
The United Nations refugee agency says about 10 000 people have left Mogadishu over the past three days alone, bringing the total displaced to nearly 100 000 since February.
Two men and two women were shot by Ethiopian troops Monday while crossing a street in Ali Kamin, where Ethiopian soldiers and tanks held their positions, residents said.
”They were told not to try to cross the street but the four ignored it,” eyewitness Ali Hasan Adan said.
The bodies were left in the street, adding to dozens of others reported killed since the Ethiopian army launched its anti-militia drive last Thursday.
”We cannot take the bodies from the area because everybody is afraid of the shooting,” said resident Ahmed Nur.
People in Mogadishu say they believe that hundreds have died — most of them civilians — while Ethiopia claims to have killed 200 insurgents.
In a separate incident on Monday near the notoriously dangerous K4 junction, two people were wounded when a vehicle escorting a Somali military officer hit a landmine.
Meanwhile, medical staff at the city’s largest Medina Hospital reported at least six people had died of their injuries in the past 24 hours.
”The hospital is overcrowded and some of the people are very seriously injured,” said Dr Dahir Dhere, a hospital staff member.
Ethiopia denied deploying any new troops to Somalia, but a spokesperson said Somali and Ethiopian forces were strengthening their positions.
”There are no new soldiers deployed from Ethiopia. They are not a new deployment. Two-thirds of the Ethiopian troops deployed to Somalia were withdrawn,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Solomon Abebe told said Monday.
An unknown number of Ethiopian forces were used to help the Somali transitional government drive Islamist fighters with alleged links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network out of south and central Somalia.
Ethiopia said last week that it would finish withdrawing its troops in consultation with the African Union, which is supposed to replace them with its own peacekeepers.
The AU has only deployed 1 500 Ugandans so far, and a first Ugandan peacekeeper was killed on the weekend.
Elders from the capital’s dominant Hawiye clan on Sunday called for an end to the fighting, but Ethiopia did not comment on the second attempt at a truce in as many weeks.
Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni held talks on Monday at the Eritrean port of Massawa to find ”practical steps” to restore calm in Mogadishu, officials said.
Ethiopian arch-foe Eritrea has advised Uganda to pull its peacekeeping forces out of Somalia, warning of ”dire consequences” if the recently dispatched African Union troops remain. — AFP
