Mogadishu ‘in flames’

MOGADISHU – Ethiopian tanks supporting the Somali interim government pounded insurgent positions in Mogadishu yesterday, intensifying an offensive that has emptied half the city of its people.

“We are under heavy artillery and tank shelling. The Ethiopians are using whatever forces and material they have,” said a fighter belonging to the capital’s dominant Hawiye clan.”This is the heaviest attack we’ve seen since the war started.”Insurgents fired back with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades in a second week of fighting that has centred around an anti-government stronghold in the north of Mogadishu and turned parts of the bullet-scarred, coastal city into a ghost town.Locals and rights activists say nearly 300 people have died in the most sustained battles since Somali-Ethiopian forces defeated Islamist rivals in a two-week war late last year.More than 1 000 were killed in a previous spike in fighting between government troops and their Ethiopian allies on one side, and insurgents – a mixed group of Islamist fighters, foreign jihadists and some clan militia – on the other.The interim Somali government says there will be no let-up in the violence until it wipes out the insurgency defying its attempt to restore central rule to the Horn of Africa country for the first time in 16 years.Doctors at a paediatric and maternity clinic did their best to treat scores of wounded who found no space among the bloodied wards of the city’s two main hospitals.”We have the doctors but we do not have medical material and medicine.We are hoping to get medical supplies from the Red Cross soon,” Abdulahi Hashi Kadiye, deputy director of Banadir Hospital, told Reuters.The incessant shelling started a fire at warehouses stocked with building material and paints, sending thick plumes of smoke above the Industrial Road area of factories, a charcoal market and soccer stadium, one witness said.The United Nations says nearly 340 000 people have fled the city, which was once home to at least one million people, and it has warned of a looming catastrophe.”At least half the capital is deserted, slowly turning it into a ghost city,” the UN refugee agency said.Analysts say Christian-led Ethiopia enjoys tacit approval for its involvement in Somalia from the United States, which accuses the Islamists of links to al Qaeda.Washington, which counts donor-dependent Ethiopia as one of its closest allies in its war against terrorism, has called for a ceasefire and said it was concerned about Somalia’s humanitarian crisis.But a report published by Britain’s Chatham House think-tank said efforts to rebuild Somalia had been undermined by the strategic concerns of Ethiopia and the United States.Nampa-ReutersThe Ethiopians are using whatever forces and material they have,” said a fighter belonging to the capital’s dominant Hawiye clan.”This is the heaviest attack we’ve seen since the war started.”Insurgents fired back with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades in a second week of fighting that has centred around an anti-government stronghold in the north of Mogadishu and turned parts of the bullet-scarred, coastal city into a ghost town.Locals and rights activists say nearly 300 people have died in the most sustained battles since Somali-Ethiopian forces defeated Islamist rivals in a two-week war late last year.More than 1 000 were killed in a previous spike in fighting between government troops and their Ethiopian allies on one side, and insurgents – a mixed group of Islamist fighters, foreign jihadists and some clan militia – on the other.The interim Somali government says there will be no let-up in the violence until it wipes out the insurgency defying its attempt to restore central rule to the Horn of Africa country for the first time in 16 years.Doctors at a paediatric and maternity clinic did their best to treat scores of wounded who found no space among the bloodied wards of the city’s two main hospitals.”We have the doctors but we do not have medical material and medicine.We are hoping to get medical supplies from the Red Cross soon,” Abdulahi Hashi Kadiye, deputy director of Banadir Hospital, told Reuters.The incessant shelling started a fire at warehouses stocked with building material and paints, sending thick plumes of smoke above the Industrial Road area of factories, a charcoal market and soccer stadium, one witness said.The United Nations says nearly 340 000 people have fled the city, which was once home to at least one million people, and it has warned of a looming catastrophe.”At least half the capital is deserted, slowly turning it into a ghost city,” the UN refugee agency said.Analysts say Christian-led Ethiopia enjoys tacit approval for its involvement in Somalia from the United States, which accuses the Islamists of links to al Qaeda.Washington, which counts donor-dependent Ethiopia as one of its closest allies in its war against terrorism, has called for a ceasefire and said it was concerned about Somalia’s humanitarian crisis.But a report published by Britain’s Chatham House think-tank said efforts to rebuild Somalia had been undermined by the strategic concerns of Ethiopia and the United States.Nampa-Reuters