Saturday, April 11, 2009
|
advertisements MOGADISHU, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The hardline Islamist rebel group of Al-Shabaab in Somalia on Saturday called the memorandum of understanding signed between Kenya and Somalia as "null and void," warning Kenya not to send its forces to the war-torn country. The two governments last week signed the MoU on their maritime boundary which both countries say will facilitate the presentation of their submissions to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf by May, as required under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea . "We know Kenya is trying to easily take the oil in south Somalia but we warned them that there are Mujahideens (holy warriors) who will burn you with the oil there. Your agreement is null and void," Sheikh Muqtar Robow Abu Mansur, spokesman for the radical group, told reporters in the southern town of Baidoa. The Al-Shabaab opposes the current Somali government led by Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, whose organization joined in the Transitional Federal government after United Nations sponsored peace talks that concluded in neighboring Kenya. Abu Mansur vowed to attack Kenya forces if, as he put it, they set foot on Somali soil under the pretext of the MoU with the Somali government. In the Somali capital Mogadishu, insurgent fighters on Saturday launched mortar attacks against the sea port where reports said supplies were being unloaded for the African Union peacekeeping forces in the city. Three people were confirmed dead and nearly 20 others wounded after the African peacekeepers responded with heavy artillery fire at the launch sites of the mortars in residential areas in the south of Mogadishu. The raid came only hours after the spokesman for Al-Shabaab accused the Somali government of selling "Somali land to Kenya" and asked his fighters to continue attacks on government positions and AU peacekeepers in Mogadishu. |
Source: Xinhua, April 11, 2009