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15 June, 2007
MOGADISHU (AFP) - Ethiopia and Somali forces on Friday displayed the largest haul of weapons recovered since swooping into lawless Mogadishu districts last week.
The weapons were seized during a house-to-house operation in the capital, where insurgents are targeting Ethiopian army and government officials, witnesses said.
The weaponry, removed to an Ethiopian military base in southern Mogadishu, included thousands of rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, mortar bombs and a wide range of other ordnance.
"This is a very big event and I can say it is a brilliant move towards peace," Somali police chief Abdi Hassan Awale Qeybdiid told a press conference here.
"We thank the Ethiopian forces for their disarmament in Mogadishu, especially because they are doing a very difficult job," Qeybdiid said.
He added that the cache consisted of the "largest number of weapons" ever recovered in the capital since Ethiopia-backed government forces quelled an Islamist-led insurgency in late April.
The recovered weapons will be handed over to the African Union peacekeepers who are deployed in Mogadishu.
Although previous disarmament drives have failed, officials have vowed to rid the capital of weapons.
Meanwhile, at least two Ethiopian troops were wounded when insurgents hurled a grenade at the northern Mogadishu's Suqbacad junction they were manning, witnesses said.
"It seemed a like a hand grenade because it detonated near the position where Ethiopian soldiers kept guard. I saw two soldiers wounded," said Mukhtar Hussein, an eyewitnesses.
Hussein said the Ethiopians arrested more than a dozens people.
Mogadishu has been awash with a wide range of firearms since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Ethiopian troops helped the weak Somali government oust Islamists -- which had called for a holy war against Addis Ababa -- from the country's southern and central regions at the end of last year.
Somalia, an impoverished nation of about 10 million people, has been wracked by lawlessness since 1991.