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by Mohamed Amiin Adow
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital city has absolutely become a place of horror and despair since earlier 2007 when deadly clashes between Islamic insurgents and Ethiopian troops backing the largely powerless but internationally recognized government erupted there.
Thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in the fighting between both sides and thousands more were wounded while hundreds of thousands have been forced to leave their homes because of the ceaseless carnage caused by the heavy guns exchanged by the Islamic insurgents and the foreign forces supporting the army of the transitional federal government particularly the gun which residents of Mogadishu hate most ``The Mortar Bomb``
The mortar bomb is literally known locally in Somalia ``Hoobiye`` which can mean ``wiper`` and why people call it, this name is, because of the way its sharpenel kills when it hits somewhere populated by people.
However the epic scene, where the brunt of civilian casualty in the fighting within Mogadishu city, has become Bakaraha market, the city’s largest open air market where major businesses in southern Somalia are run and where almost of the city’s population go for daily shopping and not only for shopping but also for earning a bread.
When insurgents fire into government positions, Ethiopian positions and also recent times into the areas housed by the peace keepers from the African Union mission to Somalia, a rapid and deadly response comes from those hit areas and the reaction which is a barrage of mortar and artillery shells deliberately comes into Bakaraha market normally consuming its regular prey, unaware civilians inside the market.
In the latest incident of the killing of innocent civilians in Bakaraha market, 42 civilians including women and children were brutally killed in and around Bakara market after mortars were rained into the market particularly at a busy hour in the earlier morning when business usually open and people start coming there.
The government alleges that all attacks on its positions and those of the foreign forces backing it are coordinated and launched from Bakaraha market so the government sees it the market as hostile zone posing a clear danger to its presence in the capital but the question is can that justify the killing of innocent fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters who, after all are the same citizens the government is supposed to protect? The answer is, absolutely not justifiable.
On the insurgents or resistance fighter as they like and call them selves are clearly and partially responsible for the carnage of the civilians being killed in the cross fire because they are always alleged to fire their guns and mortars from civilian populated areas in the city and mostly from places around the market and that is the unreasonable justification which the government lashes the market wits wrath.
In their justification, the insurgents assert that they are waging a popular war but truly, how they launch their attacks from within an area populated by innocent civilians is un-Islamic and has no rule in the Islamic and international code of war so they should cease it so lives of innocent people like those in Bakaraha market will be safe and spared.
It wasn’t only yesterday the bloodletting of innocent civilians there in Mogadishu’s Bakara market but it happened a lot of times during this dark history of the fighting which has been raging Somalia’s capital for past 21 months and clearly, the market is simply turning into a butcher house where pools of blood of innocent civilians are shed whenever sounds of artilleries and mortar bombs erupt there so what I ask my self as a true Somali citizen is, when will this senseless and cruel killing of civilians stop Mogadishu in general and its Bakaraha market in particular?
Mohamed Amiin Adow
Senior Somali journalist
Sundsvall city, Sweden
E-mail: [email protected]