By Sahal Abdulle
Sunday, April 22, 2007
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MOGADISHU, April 22 (Reuters) - Rotting corpses lay in the open and explosions shook Mogadishu on Sunday for a fifth day of fighting between insurgents and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops that have killed at least 230 people.
Illustrating regional divisions many say are fomenting the escalating war, Eritrea pulled out of the east African group IGAD after a rift with Ethiopia over Somalia. The feuding neighbours each accuse the other of stirring the conflict.
In an ever-growing exodus some say is nearing half a million people, hundreds more Somalis trudged out of Mogadishu on Sunday, dragging and carrying belongings on their head.
"I have lost all hope," one woman said, walking at the head of 11 relatives, mainly children.
Terrified residents shuddered at the sound of mortars, mainly from the north where fighting has been worst.
"Seven of us were in a bus when a mortar hit," said trader Barlin Salad. "Four were in the back, one died instantly. I'm not sure yet, but I think my husband has lost an eye."
With an insurgency simmering since the ouster of militant Islamist rulers from Mogadishu at the New Year, this week's violence has been one of the worst sustained flare-ups since.
The local Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said at least 41 civilians and six insurgents died on Sunday, adding to 52 on Saturday and 131 from Wednesday to Friday.
Residents fear the real toll may be much higher, while the number of Ethiopian and Somali soldiers killed is unknown.
A previous four-day spike in fighting at the end of March killed at least 1,000 people, again mainly civilians.
MAKESHIFT GRAVES
Around Mogadishu, rebels were barricaded behind makeshift sandbanks and raced through streets on pick-up trucks turned into battle-wagons. Ethiopian and Somali government troops fired heavy artillery and raided rebel strongholds in armoured cars.
Bodies lay on the streets on Sunday, some mutilated and decapitated by incessant shelling that has pulverised residential neighbourhoods considered Islamist strongholds.
The main Madina hospital was so full the wounded were forced into tents in the garden or just under trees.
With Somalis keen to bury their dead quickly in accord with Muslim custom, some were digging makeshift graves by the road.
The Islamists ruled most of south Somalia for the second half of 2006, before being defeated by the interim government and its Ethiopian military backers in a war over the New Year.
But Islamist fighters -- backed by some disgruntled Hawiye clan elements and foreign jihadists -- have regrouped to rise up against President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration and his Ethiopian backers whom they regard as hated foreign invaders.
The government, in turn, accuses them of al Qaeda links.
"The terrorists want to make Somalia a base to attack east African and other international targets," deputy defence minister Salad Ali Jelle said at a news conference to display two truckloads of landmines collected in two parts of the city.
"The international community should help us eliminate them."
A 1,500-strong African Union force, working with the government, has so far failed to stem the violence.
Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of sending arms and men to support the Islamists, while Asmara says Addis Ababa is occupying Somalia illegally at the behest of the United States.
Eritrea's exit from the seven-member Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) was a blow to diplomatic efforts to unite foreign opinion on pacifying Somalia.
A recent IGAD meeting backed Ethiopia over Eritrea.
"The Government of Eritrea was compelled to take the move due to the fact that a number of repeated and irresponsible resolutions that undermine regional peace and security have been adopted in the guise of IGAD," an Eritrean statement said.
Still bitter over a 1998-2000 border war, analysts say the two nations are now using Somalia as a proxy war. (Additional reporting by Jack Kimball in Asmara and Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi)
Source: Reuters, April 22, 2007