Warlord surrenders to militants

2006-07-11 08:41

Mogadishu - Somalia's last secular warlord in the capital, Abdi Hassan Awale Qeydiid, surrendered on Monday to Islamic militants after a two-day battle that left at least 67 dead.

The militants said that they had captured the warlord's headquarters in the south of the city and that his fighters had begun handing over their weapons.

They said on Sunday that they had taken full control of the city after declaring victory over Qeydiid and fellow warlord and transitional government member Hussein Aidid, but heavy fighting had resumed early afternoon on Monday.

After four months of fighting, which left more than 400 dead between militants and the United States-backed warlords, Mogadishu fell on June 05 to the militants, who also controlled swathes of southern Somalia.

Govt 'has nothing to do with peace'

Somalia's transitional government in Baidoa, about 250km from Mogadishu, demanded that the Islamists abandon territories they seized in Mogadishu and be excluded from peace talks with the government, expected to resume in Khartoum on Saturday.

But Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a top official in Somalia's supreme Islamic Court, said "the government has nothing to do with peace in Mogadishu".

He said: "This government was unable to come to the capital after being repelled by the warlords, whom we have at last toppled. They (the government) should be grateful for what we did."

Earlier on Monday in Nairobi, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni, members of the seven-nation east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), called on the international community to help deploy peacekeepers in the east African country.

In recent weeks, IGAD officials had complained that the international community, especially Western powers, had been non-committal on the Somali conflict, thus complicating regional efforts to restore a functional government there.

- AFP