Government troops enter Somalia capital

NF Reporter · 12-28-2006, 09:48 AM

AP - Somali government troops rolled into Mogadishu unopposed on Thursday, the prime minister said, hours after an Islamic movement that tried to establish a government based on the Quran abandoned the capital.

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waltky · 11-03-2007, 03:01 AM

Ethiopia tryin' to restore order...

Ethiopia steps into Somalia's battles
Friday 2nd November, 2007 - Somalia's capital, Mogadishu has been the centre of fighting by Ethiopian troops and insurgents loyal to the union of Islamic courts.

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Ethiopian troops support Somalia's interim government while the insurgents briefly controlled much of central and southern parts of the country.

Some 80,000 people have now fled the recent fighting on trucks, buses and donkey carts, while fatalities continue to grow in the city. At least five Ethiopian soldiers and seven civilians have died in fighting in areas close to the stadium.

Hospitals have reported treating a dozen wounded civilians but it is feared that fatalities may be much higher. Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Ghedi, resigned last Monday and Somali's transitional government is struggling to impose its authority.

Ethiopia steps into Somalia's battles

waltky · 03-29-2008, 12:10 AM

Somali's raiding food aid...

Displaced Somalis loot food aid in Mogadishu
Fri Mar 28, 2008 - Somalis uprooted by fighting in Mogadishu looted trucks carrying U.N. food aid on Friday, peacekeepers said, highlighting what relief agencies warn is a fast deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe.

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Somalia now has one million internal refugees, aid workers say, and their numbers increase by an exodus of some 20,000 civilians each month from the capital, where Islamist insurgents are battling the Ethiopian-backed government. Captain Clement Cimana, spokesman for a small African Union peacekeeping force in the coastal city, said the displaced residents targeted trucks carrying supplies for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) before local police restored order.

"They also blocked the main road, showing their anger," he told Reuters. "They said they always see WFP-chartered trucks full of food passing in front of them while they are hungry." A WFP spokesman in Somalia said relatively small amounts of sorghum and vegetable oil had been stolen, but that almost all the food had subsequently been recovered. Aid agencies say record high food prices, hyper-inflation and drought across the country are exacerbating the crisis and will worsen if seasonal rains due next month fail as expected.

Meanwhile, police and witnesses in Merka, south of Mogadishu, said a small unmanned plane had crashed near the coast. Local media speculated it was a U.S. surveillance drone controlled from a warship in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. military has launched several air strikes in Somalia in recent months, targeting al Qaeda suspects including the bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

REFUGEE CRISIS

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Somalia government in trouble
March 28, 2008 -- The transitional government in Somalia, installed 15 months ago by Ethiopian troops with U.S. support, appears ready to fall, a government official said.

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"I feel this slipping away," Mohamed Abdirizak, an official who abandoned a middle-class life in Virginia to return to Somalia, told the Los Angeles Times. Abdirizak made the comment as he ducked to avoid bullets fired at the palace in Mogadishu, the capital.

Leaders in the Transitional Federal Government say they are desperately in need of more support from the African Union, which has sent only a fraction of the promised peacekeeping contingent, and the United Nations, which has refused a peacekeeping force. Ethiopian troops drove out the Union of Islamic Courts, which had established its own fragile government in Mogadishu. Now, the transitional prime minister is trying to work out a deal with the Islamists.

Critics say the Bush administration erred by identifying Islamists in Somalia as terrorists. "The policy has failed," said Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., who heads the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. "We're Baghdad-izing Mogadishu and Somalia. We're making people feel wrongly treated and pushing them toward more radical positions."

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waltky · 05-06-2008, 04:44 AM

Now they fightin' over food...

Thousands in Somalia Riot Against High Food Prices
05 May 2008 - Thousands of people have violently protested skyrocketing food costs made worse by the devaluation of the local currency in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

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As many as 7,000 men and women vented their anger and frustration in the streets, burning tires and hurling stones at shops and vehicles in several areas of Mogadishu. The violence forced hundreds of shopkeepers to close their shops. There are unconfirmed reports that several people were killed or injured in the melee.

Demonstrator Bilan Muse tells VOA that ordinary Somalis, already among the poorest people on earth, have been watching helplessly as food prices skyrocketed in recent months. But she says in recent days, many traders have been insisting on being paid in U.S. dollars instead of the Somali shilling.

Muse says few people have access to dollars, leaving most unable to buy anything. She says it is an outrage that businesses are refusing to accept the country's currency and laments that there is no functioning government that can help the poor people of Mogadishu. "We have been bombed, victimized, and now even our money is worthless," she said.

For the past year, a violent insurgency, a prolonged drought, and a sharp rise in global food and oil prices have helped push Somalia's inflation to its highest level in nearly two decades. Although there are no official figures, it is estimated that the monthly inflation rate may be as high as 150 percent or more.

More VOA News - Thousands in Somalia Riot Against High Food Prices

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Somali forces 'out of control'
Tuesday, 6 May 2008 - Somalis are at the mercy of armed groups who kill, rape and kidnap with impunity, says a human rights group.

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Civilians are completely at the mercy of armed groups in Somalia, says human rights group Amnesty International. It says the situation is "dire" in the centre and the south with government troops, their Ethiopian allies and other armed groups "out of control". They carry out killings, torture, rape, beatings, arbitrary detention and forced disappearances, a report says. Troops shot two Somalis dead on Monday in a protest over rising food prices and fake currency.

People who have visited the capital, Mogadishu, recently say parts of it are a ghost town, but Amnesty says residents fleeing the city are prey for armed bandits on the road who rape the girls and steal whatever they have taken with them. Even in refugee camps Somalis face attack, Amnesty says. It says no one is offering them any protection. "We have been killed with bullets and now with hunger"- Woman protester

"Nothing justifies gang rape, slitting the throats of civilians or disproportionate attacks," Amnesty's Michelle Kagari told the BBC. Amnesty calls on the UN to condemn the violations in the strongest terms, strengthen its weapons embargo, increase its monitoring capacity, and set up a commission of inquiry.

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