Monday, October 23, 2006
In a speech on the eve of the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Islamists' supreme leader, a hardline cleric designated a "terrorist" by the United States, urged all Somalis to immediately take up arms against invaders.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, chief of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), said the time for asking Ethiopia to withdraw its troops under the threat of "jihad" was over and action was now necessary.
"We have been asking the Ethiopians to leave our country for a long time," he told thousands at the Isbahaysiga mosque in Mogadishu, the base from where the Islamists have seized most of southern and central Somalia since June.
"This is the end of that request," Aweys said. "We are now telling them that from now on, their graves will be littered everywhere in Somalia. We are not going to tell the world that Ethiopia is interfering in Somali affairs anymore."
"We will now start fighting," he said. "I am calling on all Somalis whereever they are to start jihad against the invaders and those who support them."
Aweys appeared to be referring to Somalia's weak transitional government, which along with Addis Ababa has repeatedly denied numerous eyewitness accounts of Ethiopian troops being deployed to protect the administration.
At the weekend, Somali government forces, backed by Ethiopian troops, according to witnesses, dislodged an Islamist-allied militia from a town near the government seat of Baidoa, some 250km west of Mogadishu.
The town of Burhakaba returned to Muslim control on Monday when the government forces left after what they said was an operation to restore security.
Somalia has been without a functioning central administration since 1991 and the government, formed in neighboring Kenya in 2004, has been wracked by infighting and unable to assert control over much of the country.
Source: AFP, Oct. 23, 2006