13 killed as Ethiopia soldiers, Islamist guerrillas fight in Somalia

BELETWEIN, Somalia - At least 13 people including a senior Islamic Courts militia commander were killed yesterday in heavy battles in a remote part of central Somalia, witnesses and local sources reported.

The fighting erupted Wednesday afternoon in villages located between the towns of Bulo Burte and Beletwein, the provincial capital of Hiran region.

An Ethiopian army convoy that left Bulo Burte and was en route to the border via Beletwein was ambushed by Islamist insurgents, sparking the hours-long battle.

“Sheikh Amin Abdulle Barkadle was martyred…he was the [Islamic] Courts leader in Hiran [region],” Hussein Gagale, another Islamist commander, told local media.

Residents in villages affected by the battle described horrific scenes of shells slamming into nomadic villages and killing civilians.

One witness told Garowe Online that he personally saw the dead bodies of 3 Ethiopian soldiers, although he would not comment on reports of army trucks incinerated by insurgent rockets.

Another witness, Moallim Ahmed, said: “I saw the dead bodies of at least four people, including kids and elders, who fled away from the fighting but were killed by a shell faraway."

A spokesman for the Islamists said 5 fighters were killed during the battle.

The Ethiopian army convoy was last reported to have reached a military base in the outskirts of Beletwein, the regional capital that has lacked a ruling governor since last month.

Somalia has been mired in armed conflict since the early 1990s, when warlords overthrew a military dictator and plunged the country into one of Africa's longest-running civil wars.

In late 2006, Ethiopian troops deployed into Somalia to help install the fragile interim government in Mogadishu after ousting the capital's Islamic Courts rulers.

The Islamists have since regrouped and are blamed for an ongoing insurgency that has killed thousands of people and displaced more than half Mogadishu's population.

Source: Garowe Online

6 May 2008

Djibouti accuses Eritrea of border violation

DJIBOUTI, (Reuters) - Djibouti has accused Eritrea of violating its border in a worsening dispute over the Horn of Africa neighbours' shared frontier.

Djibouti says Eritrean soldiers entered its territory last month to dig trenches and build other defences. Eritrea has made no official comment.

"The violation of the border is flagrant. The two armies are facing each other. The situation is explosive," Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh told reporters late on Monday.

"We have asked for international arbitration from the Arab League and the African Union."

Eritrean officials were not available for comment.

Djibouti and Eritrea clashed over their border in the mid-1990s. On Saturday, the African Union called on both sides to show restraint and resolve any dispute with dialogue.

It said it was sending a fact-finding mission to the border and would consult officials from both countries.

Asmara fought a 1998-2000 border conflict with Ethiopia that killed some 70,000 people. The Red Sea state also fought a short war with Yemen in the mid-1990s over territory.

Forces under Zenawi command accused of war crimes in Somalia

NAIROBI - Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women.

In a new report, the human rights group, which is based in London, detailed chilling witness accounts of indiscriminate killings in Somalia and called on the international community to stop the bloodshed. The Ethiopian government said the report was unbalanced and "categorically wrong."

Amnesty said testimony it received suggested that all parties to the conflict had committed war crimes. But it cited Ethiopian troops, in the country to back Somalia's UN-sponsored government, for some of the worst violations.

The shaky transitional government invited Ethiopian forces into the country to help it battle Islamic insurgents. Somalia has been torn apart by years of violence between the militias of rival clan warlords.

The rights group said it had scores of reports of killings by Ethiopian troops. In one case, "a young child's throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child's mother," the report says.

The Ethiopian information minister, Berhanu Hailu, said the report was "totally unfounded."

"Normally, when they report, they do not balance it out. They have to go and see the reality for themselves. They shouldn't report from abroad saying this is happening," he said in Addis Ababa.

Amnesty said about 6,000 civilians had been reported killed and more than 600,000 had been forced to flee their homes in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, last year.

"The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured. Looting is widespread and entire neighborhoods are being destroyed," Michelle Kagari, the Amnesty deputy director for Africa, said in a statement from Nairobi that accompanied the report.

The report quotes testimony from 75 witnesses as well as scores of workers from nongovernmental organizations. People are identified only by first name to protect them from retaliation.

In one testimony, Haboon, 56, said her neighbor's 17-year-old daughter had been raped by Ethiopian troops. The girl's brothers tried to defend their sister, but the soldiers beat them and gouged their eyes out with a bayonet, Haboon was quoted as telling Amnesty.

"The testimony we received strongly suggests that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties to the conflict in Somalia and no one is being held accountable," Kagari said.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew the longtime dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, and then turned on each other. Last year, Islamist militants took control of most of southern Somalia, including Mogadishu. Troops from neighboring Ethiopia dewere ployed in December 2006 and ejected the Islamists from the capital.

Since then, Mogadishu has been caught up in a guerrilla war between the government and its Ethiopian allies, and the Islamist insurgents.

Amnesty urged the United Nations, the African Union and other groups to halt the violence.

2nd day of riots in Mogadishu

Hundreds of youths in the Somali capital lobbed stones at shops and cars and set tires on fire Tuesday in a second day of violence over food prices, The Associated Press reported from Mogadishu.

The unrest Tuesday was not as widespread as a day earlier, when tens of thousands took to the streets and troops shot and killed two people.

source: The Associated Press

4 May 2008

Ethiopia soldiers accused of collecting 'illegal' tax along Somalia border

BELETWEIN, Somalia - The Ethiopian army is collecting taxes in frontier districts along the country's shared border with Somalia, a former district official has said.

Abdirahman Buruki, a former deputy mayor in Beletwein, the capital of Hiran region, told journalists Saturday that Ethiopian soldiers along the Kala-Beyr border crossing are causing "a lot of problems" for civilian and commercial traffic traveling between Somalia and Ethiopia.

Mr. Buruki, who resigned from his post a month ago, indicated that the Ethiopian soldiers are accompanied by former Hiran regional government officials.

He stated that tens of trucks are filed in a line near the Kala-Beyr crossing, adding that the Kala-Beyr mayor informed him personally that the soldiers are collecting "illegal" taxes while accusing the Ethiopian soldiers was "torture" in some extreme cases.

According to Mr. Buruki, former Hiran Governor Yusuf Daboged is "no longer a government official," although he is in Kala-Beyr alongside the Ethiopian army commanders running the illegal operation.

Somali Prime Minister Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein has recently appointed a new administration for Hiran region, but many of the newly appointed officials have publicly rejected their posts.

Source: Garowe Online

4,488 Somali and Ethiopian refugees arrive in Taiz

4,488 Somali and Ethiopian refugees arrived illegally to Taiz during the last year and the first quarter of this year, said Brigadier Yayia al-Hysami, Taiz Security Manager. About 1,013 of those refugees are female and 41 children.

Brigadier al-Haysami, during his meeting on Wednesday with UNHCR Deputy Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Nabil Othman, presented the supply, transport, and accommodation problems that face the limited possibilities for security in light of the increasing numbers of refugees.

Al-Haysami expressed his hope that the UNHCR’s responsibilities in providing aid and assistance to cope with such emergency circumstances.

In similar news, Governor of Taiz, Sadik Ameen Abu Rass discussed during Othman the ways of strengthening cooperation and coordination between Taiz governorate and UNHCR regarding the affairs of the Somali refugee arrivals to the coasts of the province.

The meeting emphasized the importance of identifying a liaison official between the local authority in the province and UNHCR to speed resolution of the situation of refugees flocking to the coasts in groups, and put a practical mechanism in their reception and transfer to Kharaz Camp.

Othman expressed its higher appreciation for humanitarian aid provided to Yemen for refugees. “In 2008, we will see further support from UNHCR for the refugees in Yemen better than previous years for access to the necessary support to face this problem and to build and repair houses in Kharaz Refugee Camp.”

Source: Yemen Observer

2 May 2008

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's Islamist rebels vowed to fight on under new leadership on Friday after U.S. warplanes killed an insurgent said to be al Qaeda's commander in the Horn of Africa country.

Aden Hashi Ayro, who led al Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies, was killed on Thursday in the latest of a string of U.S. air strikes on insurgents in the last year.

Security and intelligence sources say Ayro, in hiding since a U.S. air strike in January 2007, trained in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He was one of six members or associates of al Qaeda thought by the United States to be in Somalia.

The Western-backed Somali government is trying to stem a rebellion that has been gaining ground but the rebels said the death of Ayro would not deter them.

"Even if Ayro has been martyred, his beliefs live on. The men who he trained and consulted are still around," Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Ali Robow told local broadcaster Shabelle.

"We are warning the enemies of God that we will stay on the

Somali rebels defiant after al Qaeda chief killed

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