Somali Rebels Slam Refugee Relocation Amid Plans for Offensive

March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabaab movement criticized the government’s call for refugees near the country’s main airport to leave their makeshift houses, amid plans for an offensive against the rebel group.

Abdirisak Mohamed Nor, mayor of the capital, Mogadishu, on March 22 ordered people who have sought shelter in areas around Aden Adde Airport to leave as “there may be a group of peace haters who may attack the airport through the refugee camps.”

About a thousand people live in the camp, which is situated about 500 meters (1,640 feet) away from the airport. The refugees are “vulnerable” and shouldn’t be moved, Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, al-Shabaab’s leader in Mogadishu, told reporters last night in the city.

“The apostate government has already displaced Mogadishu residents by shelling and bombardment and it is now going to displace them again,” he said.

Somalia’s Western-backed government, which controls only a portion of Mogadishu, has been battling Islamist insurgents opposed to its rule since 2007. Earlier this month, the government signed an accord with the Ahlu Sunna wal Jama’a, a Sufist militia, to join forces against al-Shabaab, which the U.S. accuses of having links with al-Qaeda.

Al-Shabaab said last month it had information that the government was preparing to attack its positions in Mogadishu and said it had summoned reinforcements from southern parts of Somalia.

NATO Support

Last week, NATO said U.S.-contracted DynCorp International transported 1,700 Ugandan soldiers into Mogadishu earlier this month after a request for “strategic airlift support” from the African Union Mission in Somalia. At the same time, 850 Ugandan troops were redeployed out of Mogadishu, according to a statement on the Web site of NATO’s Allied Command Operations.

In a sign that the government offensive is approaching, Islamists have dug trenches across Mogadishu’s streets to impede AU vehicles, the Associated Press reported on March 20.

Somalia has one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with some 1.5 million people internally displaced and more than 560,000 people living as refugees in neighboring countries, the United Nations Refugee Agency said in January. The country hasn’t had a functioning central administration since the ouster of the former dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, in 1991.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hamsa Omar in Mogadishu via Johannesburg at [email protected].

Source: Bloomberg