Mogadishu

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi vowed on Tuesday to bring ousted Islamists to justice after the latest spate of post-war attacks targeted a minister’s house and the port in Mogadishu. Gunmen also attacked a police station in the Somali capital, as insecurity rose in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation.

At least eight people were killed and several others wounded on Saturday in mortar and grenade attacks in an escalation of guerrilla-style attacks in the Somali capital, witnesses said. Assailants fired several mortar shells at a crowded market in the south of the city, killing three people and wounding several others.

A cholera outbreak in Somalia has killed more than 115 people and hospitalised 724, medical officers said on Wednesday, while the capital was hit by more violence. Tests conducted by international medical aid group Médecins sans Frontières confirmed the cholera outbreak in towns along the Shabelle River.

The United States this week conducted a second air strike in Somalia, US officials said on Wednesday, as the top US envoy in East Africa met an ousted Islamist leader to press for reconciliation with the government. The new air strike came roughly two weeks after an AC-130 plane killed what Washington said were eight al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters.

Ethiopian forces that helped Somalia’s interim government rout rival Islamists in a war over the New Year will begin leaving the chaotic Horn of Africa nation’s capital on Tuesday, an Ethiopian general said. ”Starting today [Tuesday], we will withdraw our forces from Mogadishu,” General Suem Hagoss said at a ceremony in the volatile coastal capital.

Ethiopian troops and Somali police opened fire on Mogadishu demonstrators on Monday, killing at least three in the latest violence in parts of the capital where support for ousted Islamists ran high, a witness said.

A mortar attack on Somalia’s presidential palace has shown the need for peacekeepers to move quickly into the Horn of Africa nation, the African Union (AU) said after endorsing such a mission. The AU’s peace and security council approved a 7 650-strong force for Somalia late on Friday, just minutes before attackers struck Mogadishu’s hilltop Villa Somalia.

The top United Nations envoy to Somalia, making his first visit since a war last month, said on Thursday the Horn of Africa nation now had its best chance to end 16 years of anarchy and bloodshed. Francois Lonseny Fall made a swift visit to Mogadishu two weeks after Ethiopian and Somali government troops swept aside Islamists who had run south Somalia for six months.

A top United Nations envoy flew to Somalia’s capital on Thursday to discuss deploying African peacekeepers in order to avoid a security vacuum after the defeat of Islamist fighters over the New Year. It was the first visit by a senior UN representative since thousands of Ethiopian and Somali government troops last month ousted the Islamists.

The Somali government on Tuesday relaxed a ban on four major media outlets it had closed, accusing them of biased coverage during the Horn of Africa nation’s recent war, media owners said. Officials complained the outlets aired unconfirmed reports and leaned towards Islamists ousted at the New Year by an Ethiopian-led offensive.

Somalia’s government, with new emergency powers in hand to tame the chaotic country, ordered four major media outlets to shut on Monday as the president named a team to take charge of the capital. The interim government is struggling to impose order and has seen forces backing it attacked repeatedly, most recently in a firefight late on Sunday.

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.

Somali gunmen fired at a convoy of Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu, the latest in a series of attacks against forces backing the government, a Somali government source said on Monday. The attack happened late on Sunday in the northern Arafat area, where hours before Ethiopian soldiers helped government troops seize guns and explosives.

Distorted woofers blare out Britney Spears tracks, noisy hawkers are back and deafening gunfire is frequent: the familiar chaos has made a swift return after Mogadishu’s brief brush with Islamist rule. It is back to business as usual for residents of the Indian Ocean city.

Somali warlords agreed on Friday to merge their forces into a new national army to tame the anarchic nation, but fighting outside the presidential palace where they met showed how hard that task will be. Warlord gunmen trying to force their way inside fought Somali troops and the shoot-out killed a handful of people.

The United States launched air strikes on suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in Somalia in its first overt military intervention in the lawless nation since the early 1990s, officials said on Tuesday. The Interim Somali president defended Washington’s targeting of the camps where suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in East Africa are believed to be.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Monday arrived in the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since he was elected in 2004 while his Ethiopia-backed government struggles to exert authority over the city. Yusuf was welcomed at the capital’s main airport by Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi under tight security.

Gunmen in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, attacked Ethiopian troops supporting the Somali government on Sunday, witnesses said, sparking a firefight in the second straight day of violence in a city struggling to emerge from more than a decade of chaos.

Hundreds of furious protesters crowded the streets of Mogadishu on Saturday, burning tires, smashing car windows and shouting that they will not give up their guns despite the government’s call for total disarmament. At least two people were killed, including a 13-year-old boy, hospital officials said.

Islamic-movement fighters who have been hiding in Mogadishu since their movement’s main force was driven from the capital say they will heed al-Qaeda’s calls for guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings against troops from Ethiopia, a country with a large Christian population whose military was key to their defeat.

Somali gunmen attacked an oil-tanker truck near Mogadishu on Thursday, wounding three people and raising fears of a return to the clan violence that had largely stopped during six months of Islamist rule. The Somalia Islamic Courts Council, which had imposed strict sharia law across much of the south, abandoned the capital last week.

Kenya sent extra troops to the Somali frontier, stepped up security checks and said on Wednesday it saw no reason for Somalis to flee, underlining fears about Somali Islamic militants slipping across the border after losing a power struggle. Kenya stopped short of closing the 675km border.

Hundreds of dangling telephone cables bridge bullet-dented masts in downtown Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, but few can carry a conversation. Yet the city is a haven for making cheap phone calls. Mogadishu and the whole country remain in touch with the rest of the world thanks to mobile telephony.

Somali government troops, backed by Ethiopia, said on Wednesday that they had so far failed to capture any Islamist leaders who have been running for two days since abandoning their last remaining stronghold. In Kenya, authorities deported hundreds of Somali refugees who had crossed into the country as Nairobi heightened its frontier security.

Ethiopia said on Tuesday its troops will stay for another few weeks in Somalia to help the government pacify the Horn of Africa nation, but the Islamists they ousted in a brief war vowed to ”rise from the ashes”. The Islamists, who fled their last stronghold on Monday after a two-week conflict, said they refused a government offer to surrender.