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Somalia: 7 killed as Somali Islamist fighters seize key town of Jowhar-report
Thu. March 27, 2008 05:19 am.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) Being the most significant of several towns captured in recent months from the Western-backed Somali interim government, Somalia's Islamist fighters seized control of the town of Jowhar on Wednesday.
Sources said seven people including a child were killed in the attack, which highlights the government's inability to assert its authority on Somalia despite support from Ethiopian and African Union troops.
Meanwhile, forty aid agencies urged the world on Wednesday to focus attention on what they called a "catastrophic" humanitarian situation in the country, where hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from war, drought and food shortages.
A 15-month Islamist-led insurgency, which has killed more than 6,500 people, has seen a resurgence in recent months.
The fighters had seized four smaller towns and a military checkpoint near Mogadishu before Wednesday's capture of Jowhar, a town 90 km (55 miles) north of Mogadishu that served as a temporary base for the interim government in 2005.
"Seven people, including a woman who was a government soldier and her small child that she was carrying on her back were killed early in the morning when Islamic Courts fighters seized the town," resident Abdi Ali Osman told Reuters by phone.
He said the Islamist gunmen later freed all prisoners in Jowhar, which was once controlled by Mogadishu's mayor -- former warlord Mohamed Dheere.
A spokesman for the Islamic Courts forces, Abdirahin Isse Addow, said four government soldiers were killed in the fighting.
"Our troops entered Jowhar at six in the morning. Few government troops fought us and we defeated them, forcing them to run away," he told Reuters by phone from an undisclosed location.
Meanwhile, local elders in the coastal town of Merca, 100 km (62 miles), south of the capital, said Ethiopian troops backing the interim administration have occupied the town since Sunday.
"They called the elders and told us they arrived in Merca for security concerns and that they heard that al Shabaab groups were inside the town," local elder Mohamud Kulow Aweys told Reuters by phone.
The United States has formally designated Somalia's al Shabaab a foreign terrorist organisation to increase pressure on what Washington says is al Qaeda's main link in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
Somalia has had no effective government since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, plunging the country into chaos.
Wednesday's aid agencies' statement, issued by Oxfam, said Somalia now had one million internal refugees, their numbers swelled by 20,000 a month fleeing Islamist-government fighting in Mogadishu.
The United Nations children's agency says Somalia is the worse place in the world for children, the agencies said, adding: "Approximately one in seven children under the age of five in Somalia are acutely malnourished."-Reuters
News Category: Somalia
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