Islamic Militiamen Fire At Crowd in Somali Port
Residents Were Protesting Takeover of City

By Sahra Ahmed
Reuters
Tuesday, September 26, 2006

KISMAAYO, Somalia, Sept. 25 -- Islamic fighters in this Somali port city opened fire Monday toward residents who were burning tires, throwing stones and chanting to protest the takeover of the city hours earlier by the Islamic Courts militia.

A 13-year-old boy was shot dead and two other people were injured as violence raged for several hours in Somalia's third-largest city, witnesses said. "We have been taken over by extremists. The Islamic Courts have taken us by force, and now they are firing at us," protester Dahabo Dirie said.

Riding trucks mounted with machine guns, Islamic Courts fighters guarded main streets and forbade gatherings after the protests died down. The militia, which in June seized control of the capital, Mogadishu, poured into Kismaayo overnight to extend its grip on south-central Somalia and flank the powerless interim government on three sides.

Ministers accused the militia of mounting the offensive with fighters from Eritrea, Pakistan and Yemen. "There are foreign forces . . . which attacked Kismaayo," Interior Minister Hussein Farah Aideed told the al-Jazeera television network.

Witnesses said Ethiopian troops were heading to Baidoa, the only town the government controls, to bolster President Abdullahi Yusuf's weak military capacity. Residents in the town of Berdale, about 40 miles from Baidoa, said they saw about 400 Ethiopian soldiers.

The Ethiopian government denies it has troops in Somalia.

Somalia's interim government, whose strongest regional ally is Ethiopia, denounced the Kismaayo takeover as a breach of an agreement reached during peace talks in Sudan to halt further military expansion. Kismaayo residents, near the border with Kenya, said some of the militiamen stirred up an already tense mood by burning the Somali flag and raising an Islamic one, after taking the city hours earlier without firing a shot.

Islamic Courts spokesman Abdirahim Ibrahim Mudey said the movement, which drove out U.S.-backed warlords in its fight for the capital, had moved into Kismaayo to prevent African Union troops from using it as an entry point or base under a proposed peacekeeping operation.

The African Union wants to send troops to Somalia in a move supported by the government but opposed by the Islamic Courts. "We heard Ugandan and Ethiopian troops were heading to Kismaayo via the Kenyan-Somali border. . . . We will defend ourselves," Mudey said.

Kismaayo is an important fishing, agricultural and livestock center, a relatively prosperous city in a war-shattered nation.

The Islamic fighters' advances since June have challenged the aspirations of Yusuf's Western-backed government, which aims to restore central rule for the first time since 1991, when warlords ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.