by Mustafa Haji Abdinur
Monday, April 02, 2007
The troop movement came after dozens of civilians died and thousands fled the capital in the worst fighting in Mogadishu in more than 15 years, as Ethiopian forces try to help the Somali government restore order.
Residents on the outskirts of the embattled port city said fresh Ethiopian forces had entered the capital on the road from Baidoa, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) to the northwest, where the interim parliament is based.
Ethiopia denied that it had deployed any new troops to Somalia, but a spokesman said Somali and Ethiopian forces were strenghtening their positions.
"There are no new soldiers deployed from Ethiopia. They are not a new deployment. Two-thirds of the Ethiopian troops deployed to Somalia were withdrawn," foreign ministry spokesman Solomon Abebe told AFP Monday.
An unknown number of Ethiopian forces deployed in Somalia last year and helped the Somali transitional government drive Islamist fighters with alleged links to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network out of the capital.
Ethiopia said last week that it would finish withdrawing its troops in consultation with the African Union, which is supposed to replace them with its own peacekeepers.
The AU has only deployed 1,500 Ugandans so far, and a first Ugandan peacekeeper was killed at the weekend.
Ethiopian troops and tanks held positions in the Mogadishu's Ali Kamin neighbourhood, near the main soccer stadium, where fighting has been fiercest in recent days and sporadic gunfire continued to ring out Monday.
No clear death toll is available from the fighting since the Ethiopian army launched its drive to rid the capital of militia forces on Thursday, but the International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that dozens of civilians have been killed.
The UN refugee agency said Sunday that some 10,000 people had fled Mogadishu over the past three days alone, bringing the total displaced to nearly 100,000 since February.
A doctor told AFP that Ethiopian troops raided the hospital in the battered Ali Kamin area on Sunday.
"The Ethiopian forces broke into the hospital. They broke the doors of the offices. They have collected all the medicine and they also detained one of the doctors," said doctor Muhamud Hassan, from the Al Hayat hospital.
"We don't know why they are doing this but we are not involved in the fighting. There are a lot of patients and some have been wounded by artillery shells that landed in the hospital," Hassan said.
Elders from the capital's dominant Hawiye clan Sunday called for an end to the fighting, but Ethiopia did not comment on the second attempt at a truce in as many weeks.
The elders asked the African Union peacekeeping mission to monitor the implementation of a ceasefire.
Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni meanwhile held talks Monday at the Eritrean port of Massawa to find "practical steps" to restore calm in Mogadishu, officials said.
Ethiopian arch-foe Eritrea has advised Uganda to pull its peacekeeping forces out of Somalia, warning of "dire consequences" if the recently-dispatched African Union troops remain.
Analysts have expressed fears that Ethiopia and Eritrea, still at odds over an unresolved 1998-2000 border conflict, may fight a proxy war in Somalia.
Source: AFP, Apr 02, 2007