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| Ethiopia and Somalia at war
Quote:
Ethiopia bombs Somalian airport, numerous towns
ETHIOPIAN PRIME MINISTER SAYS COUNTRY IS AT WAR WITH ISLAMISTS
By Mohamed Olad Hassan
Associated Press
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Abdi Mohamed Osman began closing up his shop in this war-weary capital as soon as he heard: Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbor and longtime archenemy, had launched an attack near the border.
``We are going to support our brothers on the front line,'' said Osman, joining dozens of men who abandoned their stores and kiosks and said they were setting off to fight.
Ethiopia sent fighter jets into Somalia and bombed several towns Sunday in a dramatic attack on Somalia's powerful Islamist movement, which has been battling this country's government for control and has declared a holy war on Ethiopia.
Today, Ethiopian fighter jets bombed Mogadishu International Airport in the middle of Somalia's capital, residents told the Associated Press in telephone interviews. It was the first direct attack on the Islamist movement's headquarters.
Ethiopian and Somalian troops also captured the key border town of Belet Weyne early today, said Col. Abdi Yusuf Ahmed, a Somalian government army commander. Ahmed told the Associated Press that his forces entered the town without a shot fired.
Meanwhile, the artillery and mortar fire was extremely heavy early today south of the interim government's headquarters of Baidoa in central Somalia, said Mohammed Sheik Ali, a resident reached by telephone.
Many Somalis are enraged by the idea of Ethiopian involvement here -- the two countries have fought two wars over their disputed border in the past 45 years. As Sunday's fighting wore on, the Islamist militia began broadcasting patriotic songs in Mogadishu about Somalia's 1977 war with Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi went on television to announce that his country was at war with the Islamist movement that wants to rule by the Koran. Sunday marked the first time Ethiopia acknowledged its troops were fighting in support of Somalia's government, even though witnesses had been reporting their presence for weeks.
``Our defense force has been forced to enter a war to defend (against) the attacks from extremists and anti-Ethiopian forces and to protect the sovereignty of the land,'' Meles said a few hours after his military attacked the Islamist militia with fighter jets and artillery.
No reliable casualty reports were immediately available.
``They are cowards,'' said Sheik Mohamoud Ibrahim Suley, an official with the Islamist movement, which controls most of southern Somalia. ``They are afraid of the face-to-face war and resorted to airstrikes. I hope God will help us shoot down their planes.''
Eritrea, a bitter rival of Ethiopia, is backing the Islamist militia, and experts fear the conflict could draw in the volatile Horn of Africa region, which lies close to the Saudi Arabian peninsula and has seen a rise in Islamist extremism. A recent U.N. report said 10 nations have been illegally supplying arms and equipment to both sides in Somalia.
People living along Somalia's coast have reported seeing hundreds of foreign Muslims entering the country in answer to calls from the Islamist militia to fight a holy war against Ethiopia.
The Islamist group's often severe interpretation of Islam raises memories of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which was ousted by a U.S.-led campaign for harboring Osama bin Laden. The United States says four Al-Qaida leaders blamed for the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania have become leaders in Somalia's Islamist militia.
The Islamist movement drove secular Somali warlords supported by the U.S. out of the capital, Mogadishu, last summer and have seized most of the southern half of the country, which has not had an effective government since a longtime dictatorship was toppled in 1991.
The interim Somalian administration, formed two years ago with U.N. help, been unable to exert any wide control and its influence is now confined to the area around the western city of Baidoa.
Associated Press writers Salad Duhul and Mohamed Sheik Nor in Mogadishu and Les Neuhaus in Ethiopia, contributed to this report.
© 2006 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
| Source Quote:
According to UN officials, at least 2,000 soldiers from Eritrea, which recently waged war with Ethiopia, are fighting for the Islamists. They have been joined by a growing number of Muslim mercenaries from Yemen, Egypt, Syria and Libya who want to turn Somalia into the third front of what they contend is a holy war, after Iraq and Afghanistan.
For the first time since the Somali Islamists came to power in June and began expanding their reach, they seemed to be losing ground. In at least three places on Sunday — Idaale, Jawil and Bandiiradley — troops from the transitional government were pushing the Islamists back.
American officials acknowledged that they tacitly supported the Ethiopian approach because they felt it was the best way to check the growing power of the Islamists, whom American officials have accused of sheltering terrorists tied to Al Qaeda. A State Department spokesman in Washington said Sunday that the United States was assessing reports of the surge in fighting in Somalia but provided no further comment.
| From another article, in the IHT __________________ (i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
e. e. cummings - somewhere i have never traveled
|
