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June 21, 2009
MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somalia's Islamist armed group Shebab warned
Sunday against any foreign military intervention after the embattled
government pleaded for help from its African neighbours."We are
sending our clear warning to the neighboring countries.... Send your
troops to our holy soil if you need to take them back inside coffins,"
Shebab spokesman Sheik Ali Mohamed Rage told a press conference in
Mogadishu.
"We tell you that our dogs and cats will enjoy eating
the dead bodies of your boys if you try to respond to the calls of
these stooges, because we wish to die in the way of Allah more than you
wish to live," he added.
Somalia's parliament speaker Sheikh Aden
Mohamed Nur on Saturday urged neighbouring countries to send troops to
his country within 24 hours to prop up the government.
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| Hardline Islamist insurgents have stepped up attacks in the past week |
Hardline
Islamist insurgents, on an offensive since May 7 to oust a UN-backed
transitional government led by moderate Islamist Sharif Sheikh Ahmed,
have stepped up attacks in the past week.
Three top officials
have been killed in recent days, including a lawmaker, Mogadishu's top
police commander and a minister who died in a suicide bombing.
Around
300 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in the
six-week-old battle and more than 125,000 displaced, according to UN
figures and casualty tolls compiled by AFP.
The African Union has about 4,300 troops deployed in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
SOURCE: AFP, June 21, 2009