Friday, December 22, 2006
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ADDIS ABABA, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Ethiopia warned Somalia's Islamists to end their "hostile anti-Ethiopian activities" on Friday, saying patience was running out with the movement that has declared itself at war with the Horn of Africa power.
"The situation in Somalia has turned from bad to worse," said a statement from Ethiopia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"Ethiopia has been patient so far. There is a limit to this."
The warning came as Ethiopian tanks rolled to the battlefront where Islamist fighters and Somali government troops pounded each other with artillery and rockets for a fourth straight day.
Witnesses near the fighting on two fronts near the government's encircled stronghold of Baidoa in south-central Somalia said they heard the rumble of armour before dawn.
The Islamists said they would send ground troops to attack en masse on Saturday, as opposed to fighting from a distance with heavy weapons as the two sides have done so far, ignoring a European peace initiative.
"Our troops have not started to attack. From tomorrow the attack will start," Islamist deputy spokesman Ibrahim Shukri told a news conference.
Ethiopia has not confirmed its tanks are involved in the fighting.
But if they are, their involvement would raise the stakes in what is already the most sustained combat so far in a fight many fear could mushroom across the Horn of Africa, sucking in rivals Eritrea and Ethiopia.
The Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC) seized Mogadishu in June from U.S. backed warlords and quickly moved to take control of large parts of southern Somalia.
Washington and what it considers to be its top counter-terrorism ally in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia, say the Islamists are led by an al Qaeda cell, which the military-religious movement denies.
The SICC says it has the popular support the government lacks, bringing law and order to a nation convulsed with anarchy since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. (Additional reporting by Bryson Hull in Nairobi, Guled Mohamed and Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu, Ibrahim Mohamed in Jowhar, Somalia)
Source: Reuters, Dec 22, 2006