85 Somalis killed, resistance fighters drive Ethiopian occupation forces out of more towns

Editor's Note:

Readers are advised that conflict terms have been changed whenever Reuters' editors describe Somali resistance fighters as rebels, insurgents, or Islamists.

Somalia death-toll up to 85

Mon 21 Apr 2008, 15:13 GMT

By Aweys Yusuf and Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) -

Somali fighters resisting the Ethiopian occupation of their country seized two more towns on Monday and corpses lay outside a Mogadishu mosque as the death-toll from battles between Somali resistance fighters and allied Ethiopian-led troops rose to 85.

After mortars and machine-gun fire rocked the capital over the weekend in the worst fighting for months, Somali resistance fighters seized the southern coastal town of Guda, killing four (Ethiopian-backed) Somali soldiers and wounding at least seven more, locals said.

"The town is under their control at the moment," politician Omar Abdullahi Farole said from the area. That dawn attack added to at least 81 people dead in Mogadishu over the weekend.

The Somali fighters have in the last few months launched an increasing number of hit-and-run raids on small towns -- seizing control from local government-allied militias, only to melt away before reinforcements arrive.

Analysts say the resistance Al-Shabab wing is behind the attacks, which appear to be a show of strength designed to stretch the Ethiopian and Somali troops, rather than an attempt to win and hold territory.

Somali resistance fighters took another town, Dinsor, in south-central Somalia, on Monday, and another locality, Wajid, taken in the same area at the weekend.

"They warned the public against erecting illegal checkpoints, smoking cigarettes, chewing (the narcotic leaf) khat and watching movies," Wajid resident Aden Abdirahman said.

In Mogadishu, Ethiopian troops took over a mosque run by the moderate Tabligh group, arresting some inside and others in the northern neighbourhood that is an Islamist stronghold.

One woman, who asked not to be named, said she saw five dead bodies outside the mosque. One appeared Asian, she told Reuters.

Local media stations Shabelle and HornAfrik quoted locals as saying Ethiopian troops killed at least 10 people including some clerics -- but there was no independent confirmation of that.

Another resident, Abdulahi Mohamud, said at least 20 people -- mostly women and children -- had been trapped in the mosque where Ethiopian tank crews had dug deep defensive trenches. "Two Somalis who have been beheaded are also lying there," she said.

The violence has swelled an internal refugee population of about one million. The weekend fighting in Mogadishu was mainly in the already largely deserted north of the city, but Reuters reporters saw scores of Somalis heading out of the capital.

"This morning as I was trying to escape the fighting which I feared might restart, I saw four dead men I knew lying in the neighbourhood," Mogadishu resident Hussein Abdulle said.

Meanwhile, police on Monday arrested an editor with the Shabelle radio station accusing him of airing false information regarding the fighting.

"He reported that (Somali fighters) attacked and seized Gulwade compound where police are staying. It was a lie since no fighting took place there. We will put him on trial for airing false reports to the public," police commander Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdullahi told Reuters.

Colleagues gave the editor's name as Abdi Mohamed Ismail and said he was arrested on his way to the office early on Monday.

The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, a local group which tracks the violence, says at least 81 people were killed and 119 wounded in the clashes on Saturday and Sunday.

Its researchers estimate that some 6,500 residents were killed last year by fighting in the capital alone, while 1.5 million were uprooted from their homes.

Aid workers say 250,000 civilians sheltering in squalid conditions just outside Mogadishu represent the biggest group of internally displaced people in the world.

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