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by Mustafa Haji Abdinur
24 December 2006
MOGADISHU (AFP) - Ethiopia for the first time has acknowledged that ground troops and tanks were fighting in Somalia as its troops attacked Islamist forces controlling much of the country and Ethiopian jets were reported to have bombarded Islamic positions.
The actions marked a sharp escalation of conflict in the Horn of Africa nation, witnesses and the rival sides said Sunday.
Addis Ababa has long denied a major military presence beyond trainers and advisers helping Somalia's weak government.
War planes hit the town of Beledweyne and other frontier outposts, residents said, while heavy artillery battles erupted at several towns deeper in Somalia, putting hundreds of civilians to flight.
"The planes targetted infrastructure, Islamic installations like recruitment centres, and a small airstrip," Hussein Muhamoud, a Beledweyne resident, told AFP from the town about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border.
An Islamist officer in Beledweyne, Sheikh Hassan Derrow, said Ethiopian MiG aircraft were "bombing our civilians" and described the attackers as the "enemy of Allah", while other Islamists renewed calls for a holy war against the Ethiopians.
The government in mainly Christian Orthodox Ethiopia, which has its own Muslim population to consider as well as ethnic Somalis of the Ogaden region that has already seen two territorial wars, said the offensive was provoked by Islamist attempts to infiltrate Ethiopian territory.
"After tolerance for so many months, we have been forced to take these measures as our security and stability and sovereignty have been threatened," the defence ministry in Addis Ababa said in a statement.
Information ministry spokesman Zemedkum Tekle said Ethiopia took action after the Islamists shelled its territory, but denied the claims by residents and Islamic commanders in Somalia of attacks by war planes.
"No air force (was) involved," Zemedkum said, "but we are using tanks, we do have the right to do so."
The Islamists accuse Ethiopia of deploying thousands of troops to protect the government based in Baidoa, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) northwest of the capital Mogadishu, which fell to the Islamists as they extended their hold over central and south Somalia from June.
"We call on Somali people to unite against the enemy and go to Jihad," Sheikh Muhamoud Sheikh Ibrahim, the secretary general of the Islamists, told a press conference in Mogadishu.
"I am telling you that we will never lose this war because we are Muslims and they are Christians. Allah will assist us. Whatever they use, their planes and tanks, they will lose."
Somalia has been lawless and divided among warlords, a coalition of whom backs the current transitional government, since the ouster in 1991 of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, but the Islamists have this year taken control of southern and central towns and ports.
They on December 12 issued a seven-day ultimatum to Ethiopia to pull out its troops and heavy fighting began on December 20, heightening fears of a conflict that could spread in the Horn of Africa and draw in Ethiopia's foe, Eritrea.
Last month, a UN report into the violations of a 1992 arms embargo on Somalia accused Ethiopia of sending 8,000 troops into Somalia. It also accused Eritrea of deploying 2,000 troops and sending arms to back the Islamists.
Fighting was reported Sunday near the Islamic-held town of Burhakaba in the south, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) east of Baidoa, while the government said it had recaptured the nearby Idale trading post from the Islamists. An AFP correspondent saw more than 100 bodies littered in Idale.
The escalating conflict comes in the wake of heavy flooding that has affected tracts of the country, compounding the misery of its people, and the UN World Food Programme said Sunday that it had started delivering supplies by air.
A WFP-chartered Antonov dropped 14 tonnes of food into Afmadow district in the Lower Juba region of southern Somalia, according to a statement from its Nairobi office, which said a similar operation took place Saturday in northern Kenya.
"While much of the world celebrates Christmas by feasting, we must all show our commitment by helping almost half a million Somalis now threatened by regional war breaking out - just as they are trying to survive the worst floods in years after the worst drought in a decade," Leo van der Welden, WFP country director for Somalia said.
