A 13-year old bystander was killed as gunmen attacked a camp housing Ethiopian troops in the Somali capital on Sunday, after government soldiers said they secured remote regions in the south where Islamist fighters had been holed up.
The clashes erupted as the US top diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Fraser, called on the feuding Somali groups to resume dialogue to help restore stability in their country.
"A 13-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet and another man was wounded," Mohammed Mohamoud, a resident of the area told reporters.
PHOTO: AFP
"There is still sporadic gunfire in the area," he added.
A nurse in the nearby Medina hospital confirmed the fatality from the fighting that started at around 8pm, when gunmen attacked the camp housing Ethiopian and Somali troops.
"And minutes later, heavy gunfire started which lasted for about 10 minutes," said resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed Gure.
Another local resident, Abdi Mohammed, said the fighting was sparked by a grenade attack.
In Nairobi, Frazer told the government and the Islamists to resume a dialogue which collapsed early in November when the Islamists refused to meet the government while Ethiopian troops were still in Somalia.
"The [government] must reach out to the key groups inside Somalia ... including religious leaders," Frazer told a press conference in Nairobi, after holding talks with maverick Somali parliament speaker Sherif Hassan Sheikh Aden.
"This group [the Islamists] must also demonstrate their willingness to engage in the transitional federal government," she said, adding that Washington had already opened dialogue with Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, one of the Islamic Courts Union's (ICU) top leaders, who is regarded as a "moderate."
"The Islamic courts have a stake in Somali society [and] in this dialogue ... in this reconciliation. There is no reason they shouldn't be part of it," she added.
Frazer said the Islamic courts were "heterogeneous" since not all their members were extremists with ties to al-Qaeda.
Earlier, commander Abdulrasaq Afgebub said government and Ethiopian forces were in control of Ras Kamboni, a scrubland area bordering on Kenya to which the Islamists had retreated after abandoning their last major stronghold in Kismayo, about 500km south of the capital.
In central Somalia, government troops killed one person after opening fire on demonstrators who were protesting a decision by Ethiopian forces to arrest a police officer after he released an Islamist leader.
"The mission has been accomplished," Afgebub told reporters.
"Government forces have taken control of Ras Kamboni and other areas in the zone where the Islamists were based in the last four days," he said.
But the joint forces, he added, were "still tracking some of them who are hiding in the border area forest and we are going to get them."
"There is no power left for the Islamist terrorists," Afgebub said, using the term employed by Ethiopia, which justified its lightning war in Somalia on the grounds the ICU represented a threat to its own territory, while Washington accuses some of their leaders of al-Qaeda links.
The Islamists were forced to abandon their urban strongholds in southern and central Somalia when joint Somali-Ethiopian forces mounted heavy attacks against their rivals in 10 days of battles that erupted on Dec. 20.
Islamist fighters have vowed to wage a guerrilla war to destabilize the weak government and its Ethiopian backers, but no Islamist leaders could be reached on Sunday for comment on the latest government claim.
The presence of Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu has sparked street protests but relative calm returned on Sunday, a day after a teenage boy was killed during a demonstration to denounce their stay and a now-postponed disarmament drive.
In Beledweyne Somali forces killed one person and wounded three others at a demonstration to protest the arrest by Ethiopian forces of a police official who released Islamist Sheikh Farah Moalim from prison.
"The government forces tried to disperse the people and opened fire and shot one person. He died in the hospital," said Osman Adan Ares, a Beledweyne resident.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese