Somalia’s al-Shabaab rebels sent in hundreds of reinforcements and civilians fled their homes Wednesday as Mogadishu braced for a government offensive against the insurgents, months in the making.
As the guessing game continued on the launch date of the big push, the tension in the capital moved up a notch when truckloads of the radical Islamic rebels rolled in and deployed on the city’s outskirts.
Meanwhile, at least 11 civilians were killed when insurgents struck the military base of an African Union peacekeeping force, known as Amisom, drawing heavy retaliatory shelling, witnesses and medics said.
“I saw five civilians killed in one place where artillery fire struck near a small bus station in Bakara,” Abdifatah Mohamed told Agence France-Presse.
Mohamed Aden Yare and other witnesses reported another incident in the same area that left four dead, including two women.
Medics at Mogadishu’s main Medina Hospital said two of the more than 20 wounded they brought in died of their injuries immediately.
“Eighteen trucks — big trucks — packed with al-Shabaab militants drove through Lafole,” a town west of Mogadishu, local resident Abdullahi Mohamed said.
Abdullahi Adan Anwar, a resident of Mogadishu’s north-western neighbourhoods, saw fighters fanning out in the streets.
“I saw hundreds of new al-Shabaab militants deployed around the Hodan and KPP [Casa Populare] districts this morning [Wednesday]… They are heavily armed with machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons,” he said.
Somalia’s internationally backed president, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, celebrated late last month his first year in office under a hail of mortar fire.
A year ago, the moderate Islamist cleric was trumpeted by Washington and others as the devastated Horn of Africa country’s best hope of peace in years.
He has since failed to bring hardliners back into the fold, while pledged foreign assistance to develop his military capacity has been sluggish, and he has remained boxed in his Mogadishu compound, under Amisom’s protection.
But after receiving Western training and equipment, transitional federal government (TFG) forces, backed up by Amisom and clan militia loyal to Sharif are now on the brink of a major fightback.
Warning
Al-Shabaab controls about 80% of southern and central Somalia and launched a military offensive in May 2009 to topple Sharif and create an Islamic state.
Its spokesperson in the strategic southern city of Kismayo on Wednesday warned Kenya against any attempt to support the TFG’s attack.
“We are not at war with Kenya at the moment but we are monitoring their acts of aggression in our country which have prompted us to be alert,” Sheikh Hassan Yaakub said on the al-Shabaab-run Radio Andalus.
“The Kenyan government has been recruiting Somali soldiers who have now been armed and are ready to fight us. We will teach them a historic lesson that will not be forgotten,” he said.
Nairobi has flatly denied the accusation but several regional intelligence sources have confirmed that it has helped train and equip Kenyan and Kenya-based Somalis to take part in the offensive.
The southern port of Kismayo, located 160km north of the Kenyan border, is a key source of revenue for al-Shabaab as well as a crucial potential entry point for weapons supplies.
Meanwhile, in Mogadishu, a city which has been bleeding its population steadily for more than three years, residents were packing their bags and fleeing to safer areas.
Among them was Mohamed Gobe, a grocer, who has had to abandon his home in the Suqbaad neighbourhood this week for a sixth time.
“We know that war never brings lasting solutions to this country’s problems. Those war games only raise the number of civilian casualties and nobody is going to win this conflict,” he said.
The UN’s refugee agency is already struggling to assist the million people displaced in 2007 and the quarter of a million more who have been displaced since May. — Sapa-AFP