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Islamists making comeback in Somalia, officials say

A wounded man is pictured at Medina Hospital in Mogadishu, Ethiopia, on Thursday. PHOTO: AFP

A radical Islamic group that was driven from power one year ago by a Western-supported offensive is making a significant comeback in Somalia and the government can do little to stop it, officials said, as violence took at least 17 more lives.

Sheik Qasim Ibrahim Nur, director of security at Somalia's National Security Ministry, said on Thursday that the government has no power to resist the Islamic group, which the US has accused of having ties to al-Qaeda.

Fighters linked to the group, the Council of Islamic Courts, have been waging an Iraq-style insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year, and the UN says the country is facing the biggest humanitarian crisis in Africa.

"About 80 percent of Somalia is not safe and is not under control of the government," Nur said. "Islamists are planning to launch a massive attack against the [government] and its allied troops."

He appealed for international support, saying Islamic fighters "are everywhere."

Government officials rarely acknowledge what many observers have concluded about their tenuous grip on power. But on Thursday, even presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamed Mohamud confirmed that Muslim fighters were regrouping. He added that they have "a lot of weapons and foreign fighters."

Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged more African nations to send peacekeepers to Somalia.

About 1,800 Ugandan peacekeepers are in Somalia, officially as the vanguard of a larger African Union peacekeeping force, though no other countries have sent reinforcements so far. Ethiopia, which with tacit US approval sent soldiers to Somalia last year to wipe out the Islamic militants, is not part of the peacekeeping force and is hoping to withdraw.

The US can do little by itself in Somalia. An intervention in the early 1990s left 18 US servicemen dead and the legacy of the battle, featured in the movie Black Hawk Down, still weighs heavily on both countries. But Western powers have long been concerned that the lawless country could become a breeding ground for terror.

Ted Dagne, an African specialist at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the US Congress, said the Islamic leadership was never truly gone, simply underground.

"The Somali and Ethiopian governments may have underestimated the level of organization and determination on the part of the Islamic courts," he said.

Dagne added that many people look back on the group's six months in power and conclude the country then "was relatively peaceful and gave hope to the people of Somalia that after over a decade of violence, they can live in peace."

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf was in London, where he flew earlier in the week for what his aides described as a regular medical checkup. On Thursday, 73-year-old the president was said to be well, but uncertainty over his condition persists, adding to the tension in his homeland.

Officials from Ethiopia denied there is any Islamic resurgence.

"The facts on the ground tell you that they are in bad shape and having serious difficulties," said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Earlier on Thursday, mortars slammed into the biggest market in Mogadishu, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 40, witnesses said. A separate gunbattle killed five people.

The death toll was expected to rise from the latest bloodshed, blamed on the vicious battles pitting insurgents against Somali troops and their Ethiopian allies.

"I saw so many dead people lying on the road, I couldn't even look at them, I was so scared for my life," Salah Garweyne, a Mogadishu resident, said.
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