|
Hundreds surrender to Islamists
11/07/2006 15:03 - (SA)
Mogadishu - Hundreds of fighters who were battling Somalia's Islamic militia in the capital surrendered early on Tuesday after a surge of violence that killed more than 70 people since Sunday, said officials.
Heyle Abdi, a top Islamic commander, said the fighters, loyal to secular warlord Abdi Awale Qaybdiid, gave up their weapons and trucks to the Islamic militia. The whereabouts of Qaybdiid were not immediately clear.
The Islamic fighters wrested Mogadishu from a United Staes-backed secular alliance of warlords last month, but Qaybdiid had refused to disarm.
'The war was inevitable'
The new violence started on Sunday and broke weeks of relative calm under the rule of the Islamic fighters, who had grown increasingly radical since seizing Mogadishu and establishing strict courts, based on Islamic law.
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a top Islamic official, said: "The war was inevitable because nobody can have authority in the city beyond the Islamic courts."
Mortar shells and gunfire shook the city for two days, sending residents into homes and shops or fleeing Mogadishu altogether.
Somalia had been without an effective government since warlords overthrew its long-time dictator in 1991 and divided the nation into fiefdoms. The Islamic fundamentalists had stepped into the vacuum as an alternative military and political power.
US officials co-operates with warlords
The volatile nation in the Horn of Africa had been a particular concern to the US, which had long-standing fears that Somalia would become a refuge for members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, much like Afghanistan did in the late 1990s.
US officials co-operated with the warlords, hoping to capture three al-Qaeda leaders allegedly protected by the Islamic council, who were accused in the deadly 1998 bombings at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But the Islamists prevailed, taking the US by surprise and further marginalising the country's interim government.
The interim body was established with the help of the United Nations, but was powerless outside its base in Baidoa, 150km from Mogadishu.
|
News
