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/ 3 February 2009
The deputy mayor of Somali capital Mogadishu has accused AU peacekeepers of opening fire on commuter buses, killing more than 20 civilians.
Allied Ethiopian-Somali troops in Somalia have killed 71 Islamist insurgents in an operation launched in central regions late last week.
The senior leader of Somalia’s Islamist opposition vowed on Wednesday to expel United States-backed Ethiopian troops by force and create an Islamic republic in the war-torn country. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who led Somalia’s Islamic Courts movement, said Mogadishu’s Western-backed Transitional Federal Government was run by ”traitors”.
Somali government officials and exiled Islamist opposition leaders are to hold face-to-face peace talks in Djibouti, the United Nations special envoy to the country said on Friday. Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991, with the capital, Mogadishu, plagued by political and civil unrest, food riots and attacks on Western aid agencies.
Soldiers, insurgents and bandits are routinely attacking Somalian civilians, carrying out murder, rape, and robbery on villagers, and destroying entire districts, Amnesty International said on Tuesday. Gang rape and throat cutting — referred to locally as ”killing like goats” — is prevalent.
Militias allied to the Somali government recaptured a southern port from Islamists on Tuesday, taking the death toll from an upsurge of fighting in recent days to nearly 100, witnesses said. The militias recaptured Guda town, which had been taken by the Islamists’ militant al-Shabaab wing on Monday.
Somalia’s top exiled Islamist leader on Wednesday pledged his camp’s commitment to a new peace drive but warned the movement would keep up its struggle against what it calls Ethiopian occupation. "Members of the international community are trying to help Somalis overcome their differences and we will do all we can," Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said.
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/ 11 November 2007
The toll from some of the worst fighting in Somalia’s war-wracked capital climbed to 59 on Saturday, as thousands fled the city fearing more clashes between Ethiopian forces and rebels, witnesses said. Residents recovered bullet-riven bodies, ripped limbs and shattered skulls on the blood-streaked streets.
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/ 10 November 2007
Ethiopian troops shelled suspected Islamist hideouts on Friday in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where some of the worst clashes in months have left at least 43 dead in two days, many of them civilians. The escalating violence came as the Ethiopian army tried to flush out pockets of insurgents in southern districts of the Somali capital.
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/ 8 November 2007
Civilians dragged the body of an Ethiopian soldier through the streets of Somalia’s capital on Thursday after fighting with insurgents killed a second soldier and civilian, witnesses said. In the grisly incident, more than 100 civilians stepped and spat on the scarred body as they dragged it for several kilometres on a pot-holed asphalt road.
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/ 28 October 2007
Hundreds of families fled Mogadishu on Sunday following an upsurge in violence pitting Islamist insurgents against Somali security forces and Ethiopian troops, it was reported. The latest bout of fighting in the Somali capital appeared to have prompted a fresh wave of displacement.
A key Somali Islamist leader on Tuesday called for jihad, or holy war, vowing that a bloody insurgency against the Ethiopian-backed government in Mogadishu would end only with the return of Islamic law. ”What we want is to free our country from Christian colonisers — by this I mean Ethiopia,” said Sheikh Mukhtar Robow.
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/ 12 September 2007
Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys dismissed United States terrorism allegations against him and instead blamed Washington for instability in the Horn of Africa, in an interview published on Wednesday. ”The US cannot present any concrete evidence for its unfounded accusations,” Aweys said.
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/ 10 September 2007
Somalia’s opposition leaders predicted on Monday that a further surge in an Islamist-led insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu, could defeat Ethiopian troops supporting the government there within two months. "The liberation forces are gaining strength day after day," said Zakariya Mahamud Abdi, spokesperson of a congress in Eritrea’s capital, Asmara.
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/ 7 September 2007
Gunmen killed two police officers in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where the embattled transitional government is facing a deadly insurgency, police said on Friday. The pair were killed overnight when insurgents ambushed a police patrol in northern Mogadishu’s Huriwa district, one of the most volatile zones in the lawless city, said police officer Abdulwahid Mohamed.
A Somali reconciliation conference aimed at ending 16 years of war and attended by thousands was due to wrap up on Thursday after six weeks of talks that were marred by relentless violence in Mogadishu. ”It was the first time such a large number of Somali delegates in favour of peace met,” said clan elder Bile Mohamud Qabowsade.