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By Guled Mohamed
03 January 2007
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Gunfire rattled near Somalia's border with Kenya early on Wednesday and Ethiopian warplanes backing the Somali government streaked overhead in pursuit of fleeing Islamist forces.
The Islamists, who withdrew from their last stronghold on Monday after two weeks of war, pledged to fight on, rejecting an amnesty offer from the interim government, seeking to install itself in the capital and assert its authority.
The Islamists have melted into hills between the Indian Ocean port of Kismayu and the long frontier with Kenya.
Residents of Liboi, a Kenyan border post, said they saw Ethiopian fighter jets and helicopter gunships flying over the Somali town of Doble, 25 km (15 miles) away, late on Tuesday. They then heard shooting which tailed off after midnight.
"When we heard the gunshots we panicked, although we knew it could be these groups fighting across the border," one said.
Nairobi sealed the border after the Somali interim government urged it to stop the leaders of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) or foreign jihadist supporters escaping.
"No armed individual or group can enter our country or be allowed to compromise its security," local Kenyan police commander Johnstone Limo told Reuters by telephone. "We shall stop them, arrest them and, if necessary, fight them."
Eight suspected combatants were being questioned after they were arrested trying to enter Kenya near Liboi on Sunday.
An ambush that killed at least one Ethiopian soldier in south Somalia on Tuesday showed the fighting may go on, despite a lightning military offensive by Ethiopian tanks, troops and jets that routed the Islamists from Mogadishu then Kismayu.
European diplomats met in Brussels to push for a revival of peace talks. "We are keen to see an inclusive political process in Somalia ... without that it will be difficult to achieve security," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told Reuters ahead of the meeting.
PEACEKEEPERS WANTED
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says his forces will stay in Somalia for a few more weeks to help the government pacify the Horn of Africa nation. Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said they may stay months.
Both have called for international peacekeepers to be sent without delay. Uganda has provisionally offered a battalion, and President Yoweri Museveni was due to hold talks on Somalia with Meles in Addis Ababa on Thursday.
Kampala has said it will only deploy when its mission and exit strategy are clearly defined. Nigeria may also help.
The Islamists vowed to "rise from the ashes," and a day after Ethiopian armor rolled into the southern town of Jilib a resident said a Somali gunman killed two Ethiopian troops.
A Somali government source said only one Ethiopian died.
The Islamists said such attacks were a change of tactics.
"We are scattered all over, our troops are almost everywhere," an SICC spokesman said by phone from a hideout.
Analysts say the Islamists, joined by some foreign fighters, may launch an Iraqi-style insurgency against a government they see as propped up by Ethiopia, a hated and Christian-led power.
Prime Minister Gedi says the government has taken prisoner Arab fighters, Ethiopian rebels and troops sent by Ethiopia's arch-foe Eritrea on the battlefield.
U.S. warships were patrolling off Somalia to stop SICC leaders or foreign militant supporters escaping, diplomats said.
Gedi has demanded militia and residents of the capital Mogadishu hand in their thousands of firearms by Thursday in a drive to disarm one of the world's most dangerous cities.
His government's legitimacy hangs on returning to Mogadishu and restoring central rule for the first time since the 1991 overthrow of a dictator. But few guns were handed in.
"Nobody has brought anything. Not even a pistol," said one local, speaking at a deserted weapons collection point. "Arms are a means of employment for many. To ask them to just lay down their arms is like telling them not to work and not to eat."
(Additional reporting by Noor Ali in Garissa, Francis Kwera in Kampala and Ingrid Melander in Brussels)
Source: Reuters