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Fled president back in Mogadishu
08/01/2007 15:28 - (SA)
Mogadishu - Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Monday arrived in the capital for the first time since he was elected in 2004, said reports.
Yusuf was welcomed at the capital's main airport by Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi under tight security by government troops nearly two weeks since an Islamist movement fled the lawless city.
It was also the first time Yusuf had set foot in the capital since he and other former army officers fled the city in 1978 after a failed Ethiopia-backed attempt to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, who was toppled three years later.
Witnesses said Yusuf and Gedi headed to Villa Somalia, the presidential palace in southern Mogadishu that was used by Barre until his fall in 1991, after the country was carved up among rival clan warlords and their fighters.
The president survived a September 18 assassination bid after assailants blew up a car outside parliament in the provincial town of Baidoa, then the only major town in government hands, that was blamed on the Islamic Courts Union.
A top security official said: "We don't want to take any risk, we do not want any suicide attack. This is why we are taking strict security measures."
- AFP
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