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Sunday, June 07, 2009
MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somalia's top opposition leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys on Sunday blamed pro-government forces for civilian deaths in the latest month of intense fighting.
"We are urging the foreign troops and the self-appointed leadership to stop killing and displacing the people in Mogadishu," he told AFP by phone from the capital.
Aweys is the head of the hardline Hezb al-Islamiya group and a key figure in the insurgency that launched a massive offensive a month ago against the internationally backed government of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
"Those resistance groups that are engaged against the occupation forces are doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties," he said.
Sources in the Somali government claimed Saturday that Aweys had been killed or seriously wounded in intense battles near the border with Ethiopia on Friday.
Aweys did not comment on the reports but said he would hold a press conference in Mogadishu on Monday to give his assessment of the latest fighting and outline his plans.
Hezb al-Islamiya and the hardline Shebab armed group are the two main factions in the insurgency bent on toppling Sharif and ousting African Union peacekeepers from the country.
Aweys and Sharif were two of the Islamist leaders who took over most of Somalia in 2006 before being ousted by an Ethiopian invasion in support of the transitional federal government.
Sharif eventually joined a UN-sponsored reconciliation process based in Djibouti which Aweys, who returned from two years in exile in Eritrea in June, has always rejected.
Aweys demands the departure of the peacekeepers, whom he describes as invaders bent on corrupting Somalia's Islamic culture.
Source: AFP, June 07, 2009