Ethiopian troops under fire in Somalia

Gunmen attacked Ethiopian troops supporting the Somali government, sparking a fight in the second straight day of violence in a city struggling to emerge from more than a decade of chaos.

Farah Abdi Hussein, who witnessed yesterday’s attack, said gunmen launched grenades on Ethiopians about 2.5 miles from Mogadishu airport. One Somali soldier was wounded, according to a Somali military official.

Ethiopian soldiers, tanks and warplanes intervened in Somalia on December 24 to help defeat an Islamic movement that threatened to overthrow the internationally recognised government, which at the time controlled only the western town of Baidoa.

But many in predominantly Muslim Somalia resent having troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population. The countries fought two brutal wars, the last in 1977.

On Saturday, hundreds of furious protesters took to the streets, burning tyres and smashing car windows while denouncing the presence of Ethiopian forces and shouting defiance at the Somali government’s call for disarming Mogadishu.

Two people died in Saturday’s violence, including a 13-year-old boy.

Yesterday, a similar protest took place about 215 miles away in Belet Weyne, after Ethiopian troops there detained a Somali military commander who refused to hand over an Islamic militiaman, witnesses said. That protest also turned violent, killing a 20-year-old civilian.

Somali troops increased patrols in Mogadishu yesterday, setting up six extra checkpoints.

Dahir Abdi Kulima, a chieftain of the Hawiye, the dominant and influential clan of southern Somalia, said the government’s reliance on Ethiopia was backfiring.

“Since the Ethiopians arrived people are sleeping and waking with worry about what will happen next,” Kulima said. “This is a sign of upcoming problems in Somalia.”

The most senior US diplomat for Africa said yesterday that the United States would use its diplomatic and financial resources to support Somalia’s government.

Jendayi Frazer, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, has repeatedly accused al-Qaida of infiltrating and taking over the Islamist movement in Somalia.

“I think we are pushing uphill as an international community, as well as the Somali people themselves, to try to overcome their history,” Frazer said.

Frazer was planning a surprise visit to Mogadishu yesterday but called it off because the details of her visit were made public, sparking serious security concerns in a city known for its unpredictable violence.

The African Union has begun planning for peacekeepers and Uganda has promised at least 1,000 troops. Frazer has said she hopes the first troops will begin arriving in Mogadishu before the end of the month.

The mission will be modelled on a peacekeeping force that recently concluded duty in Burundi.

African troops there provided security for political leaders and key facilities while a new government took over the country. Like the AU mission in Burundi, a mission to Somalia could be switched to a United Nations operation if necessary, Frazer said.

Frazer said Somalia is important to the United States because of its strategic location in the Horn of Africa, where the Red Sea opens into the Indian Ocean. The US also wants to make sure international terrorists do not take advantage of the chaos to establish a safe haven.

There have already been three terrorist attacks in the region. An al-Qaida cell blew up the US Embassies in Kenyan and Tanzania in 1998 and attacked the USS Cole in 2000 across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.

The same cell that destroyed the embassies stuck again in 2002, bombing a Kenyan hotel and attempting to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

Somalia’s Islamists have vowed from their hideouts to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war.

Also yesterday, a top Somali politician with ties to leaders of Somalia’s militant Muslim movement urged remnants of the routed Islamic militia to surrender and join the peace process.

Sheikh Sharif Hassan Aden, speaker of Somalia’s transitional parliament, dropped his opposition to having foreign peacekeepers in Somalia, calling on Somalis “to welcome, to hail, to respect, to accommodate them in a peaceful manner”.

Aden has been a strong critic of Somalia’s government and is closely linked to leaders of the Council of Islamic Courts, who have scattered into the countryside and promised a guerrilla war after being defeated on the battlefield last week.