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06 January 2007
MOGADISHU (AFP) - Ethiopian forces supporting the weak Somali government have fired shots in the air to disperse demonstrators denouncing their presence and a disarmament plan in the capital Mogadishu.
Some 200 protestors took to the streets south of the capital chanting "We don't want disarmament," "We don't need Ethiopians here," hurled rocks at the troops' camp in Villa Baidoa, south of Mogadishu, blocked roads and lit up tyres.
"We dont want a one-sided disarmament ... we dont need the Ethiopians, they must leave our country," said Bile Abdi, one of the protesters.
"We don't want disarmament to take place in Mogadishu only," Bile said Saturday, adding that the plan targeted "one part of Somalia and that is Mogadishu."
At least three people were injured when a grocer opened fire at some of the demonstrators who tried to loot his shop.
"There were some gangs of robbers among those who were demonstrating and that is why I opened fire to stop them coming to my shop to loot," shopkeeper Ali Nur told AFP.
The protest was the third to hit the war-torn capital since the government and its Ethiopian backers moved to Mogadishu and drove off its Islamist rulers following days of heavy fighting that also uprooted the Islamists from several of their strongholds in south and central Somalia.
On Monday, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, who alongside President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has appealed for an urgent deployment of peacekeepers, announced a three-day ultimatum for people to surrender their weapons or face forceful disarmament but the order went largely unheeded.
At an international panel meeting on Somalia Friday, Kenya, which organised the regional initiative that brokered the formation of the government, warned that failure by the world to act immediately would lead to a vacuum in Somalia that would certainly be exploited by warlords and other extremist forces.
Deputy Defence Minister Ali Salad Jelle said the forceful disarmament set for Saturday had been postponed indefinitely after members of the Hawiye clan, majority in the capital, urged Gedi to shelve the plan.
"The disarmament operation which was due to start today has been postponed after local Hawiye clan (members) asked the prime minister to set the disarmament for another time and not now," Jelle told AFP.
"We have not given a specific time, but in the near future the disarmament will be done all over the country ... We hope it will end within a short time without bloodshed," Jelle added.
Somalia, a nation of some 10 million, has lacked an effective central authority since plunging into chaos after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Source: AFP