In Somalia, Battle Ends for Streets of Capital

NAIROBI, Kenya — The streets of Mogadishu, Somalia’s besieged capital, were finally quiet on Wednesday, after 10 days of heavy fighting that has claimed more than 100 lives. Beleaguered residents stepped out of their homes for the first time in days, unsure if the insurgents who had been hammering Somalia’s weak transitional government had been decisively pushed back or if the lull was simply another pause to regroup and reload. African Union officials are claiming a small victory of sorts, saying that their peacekeepers in Mogadishu, who now number around 7,000, had seized several strategic intersections from the insurgents. “We are expanding our zone,” said one African Union official who was not authorized to speak publicly. “We have killed more than 300 insurgents in the past week or so.” Residents in Mogadishu said that the better-equipped and better-trained African Union troops, who are mostly Ugandans, had replaced the Somali government forces on the front lines, a change that might have helped push back the insurgents over the past few days. Still, most analysts estimate that there are several thousand militant Islamist fighters in Somalia, and they seem to be getting more sophisticated and more ambitious. On Tuesday, a powerful roadside bomb tore into three minibuses and killed as many as 15 people, including several female college students who were on a vacation during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Somalia’s Information Ministry said. The road had been one of the few in Mogadishu that was considered safe for civilians. “In minutes, there were pools of blood and screaming people,” said Ahmed Omar, a passer-by reached by phone from Nairobi. Ali Muse, the head of the city’s clearly overwhelmed ambulance service, said that medics had collected 8 bodies and treated 25 wounded people. Many residents believe that the bomb was planted to hit African Union troops or government personnel. “Whoever did this is a traitor to Somalia and a ruthless, callous murderer,” said Abdirahman Omar Osman, Somalia’s information minister. He added that “we are heartbroken that once again it is our young students who die at the hands of extremists intent on destroying our country,” alluding to a suicide bombing in December at a graduation ceremony for medical students that killed four government ministers and a number of students. The past few days have been especially bloody. Also on Tuesday, four civilians were killed in heavy shelling that hit the Bakaro market, a notorious insurgent hide-out. The day before, an insurgent mortar shell killed four African Union peacekeepers guarding the presidential palace. The Shabab, the militant Islamist group leading Somalia’s insurgency, held a news conference on Wednesday warning that “foreign forces” might join the fight and launch airstrikes against them. They asked civilians in the Shabab-controlled areas of Mogadishu to fight side by side with them and hide them, if necessary.
The American military has killed several Somali insurgent leaders and terrorism suspects in covert strikes over the past few years, though American officials have recently said that it was crucial for Somali government forces to assert themselves and that this war could not be won by outside help. Also on Tuesday, a Somali journalist working for a local radio station, Abdullahi Omar Geddi, 25, was stabbed to death in the central Somalian town of Galkaiyo by unknown assailants, according to an e-mailed statement by the National Union of Somali Journalists. Several Somali journalists have been killed in recent years. NY Times