Monday, November 13, 2006
As many as 3 000 heavily armed gunmen loyal to authorities in the semi-autonomous enclave of Puntland who have vowed to resist the country's powerful Islamist movement moved into the town of Galkayo, witnesses said.
Residents of Galkayo said the fighters were backed by Ethiopian soldiers but Puntland authorities denied this and maintained the deployment was purely defensive following the Islamists' seizure of a nearby trading post on Sunday.
Still, militia commanders affiliated with ex-Mogadishu warlord Abdi Awale Qeybdiid said they planned to drive the Islamists out of Bandiradley, about 70km south-west of Galkayo.
"We are preparing to wage an attack on the terrorists around Bandiradley to retake the town and this will happen soon," commander Saidi Dhegoweyne said by phone from Galkayo, about 700km north of Mogadishu.
Residents said they saw between 1 000 and 3 000 Puntland soldiers, some on machine-gun mounted pick-ups, along with six vehicles of uniformed Ethiopian troops, roll through the town in the direction of Bandiradley.
"They were headed to the frontline," Galkayo businessman Abdulkadir Ali Koshin said.
At least 13 people were killed on Sunday when the Islamists captured Bandiradley from Qeybdiid's men, moving to their most northerly point since seizing Mogadishu and most of southern and central Somalia beginning in June.
The seizure brings them the closest they have come to Galkayo. The town marks the border with Puntland, which has been relatively calm and free of the violence that has wracked the south and center for the past five months.
Ali Abdi Warre, a security official in Mudug region, which includes both Galkayo and Bandiradley, said as many as 10 000 Puntland troops would be marshalled to defend the enclave but denied any Ethiopian presence.
The Islmists deny they want to seize Galkayo, a hotbed of support for Somalia's Ethiopian-backed President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, but say they will defend themselves and pursue their attackers wherever they go.
A move on Galkayo would be a major escalation in the deterioriating situation in Somalia that diplomats and analysts fear could erupt into full-scale war and engulf the Horn of Africa region in bloody conflict.
It would also open a second front for the Islamists and the government whose forces are girding for battle around the government's seat of Baidoa, about 250km north-west of Mogadishu.
Source: AFP, Nov 13, 2006