Monday, October 16, 2006
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BAIDOA, Somalia (AFP) - Heavily armed militiamen surrounded the home of the commander of Somalia's police force Monday, officials said, underscoring the tenuous authority of the country's transitional government. The move on the house of General Ali Hussein Loyan by a local commander in the government's temporary seat of Baidoa follows a deadly September gunbattle between the police and the militia at the town's airport, they said.
"My forces sealed off his residence of the general overnight to arrest him," the commander, Aden Saransor, said. "Loyan unlawfully ordered the killing of militia that guarded the Baidoa airport for years.
"The relatives of the deceased want justice for the killings," he said, adding that mediation to end the standoff led by Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was ongoing.
Witnesses said that the standoff involved dozens of police officers and militia loyal to the Hadamo subclan, members of which were among at least 10 people killed in the September 4 airport operation that Loyan headed.
"My people are crying for justice or want to see Loyan's blood," said Hadamo leader Hassan Sheikh Abdullahi.
At the time, the government apologized for the deaths but said that it had ordered police to remove the militia from the airport to improve security and assert control in Baidoa, 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of Mogadishu.
Loyan has been in Kenya since the incident and returned to Baidoa only Sunday.
Hadamo subclan members said that they wanted Loyan either turned over to them or returned to Kenya.
Somalia has been without a functioning central government since 1991 and Gedi's administration, formed in neighboring Kenya in 2004, has been wracked by infighting and unable to assert control over much of the country.
In addition to competing with rival regional warlords and their militia, it faces a strong challenge from a powerful Islamist movement that seized Mogadishu in June and now controls most of southern and central Somalia.
Source: AFP, Oct. 16, 2006