Nairobi - Somalia's government called on Saturday for an international peace plan like President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy, saying it would be more effective and far cheaper than current efforts to combat Somali piracy.

"We accept that ... the situation in Somalia will appear beyond repair but the reality is very different," Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said in a letter to The Times newspaper in Britain.

Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since 1991 and is home to insurgents and pirates, who prey on shipping in the Indian Ocean despite international naval patrols. Sharmarke's UN-backed administration controls only part of the capital, Mogadishu.

Obama's plan for Afghanistan marked a "sea change in international support to troubled countries", wrote Sharmarke. "What is so startling is that all the conclusions are as true about Somalia as they are about Afghanistan."

Obama announced this week that the United States would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan to combat Taliban insurgency, as well as measures aimed at ending corruption and promoting local accountability before a U.S. withdrawal.

"Piracy and the growth of Islamic extremism are not the natural state of being. They are but symptoms of an underlying malaise - the absence of government and hope," Sharmarke said.

"The irony is that it would cost only a quarter of what is being spent right now on the warships trying to combat piracy, to fund our plan and actually solve the problems rather than simply chasing them round the Indian Ocean," he said.

The Horn of Africa state hit the headlines again this week when a suicide bomber struck a medical graduation ceremony and killed at least 22 people, including three government ministers, several doctors, students and their relatives.

Western security agencies say Somalia has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the impoverished region and beyond.

Fighting has killed at least 19,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.5 million from their homes, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

Sharmarke agreed regional stability was increasingly at stake, and said his administration first needed help to restore effective government and train its security forces.

Second, he said, the world must restore and enforce the nation's economic exclusion zone so it could use its own potential wealth of fish, oil and gas to fund its future.

"Our fishermen currently watch as other countries plunder our waters," the prime minister said. "Whilst we condemn it outright, it is no wonder these angry and desperate people resort to 'fishing' for ships instead."

Thirdly, he called for a large civil programme to train young Somalis and set up legitimate commercial livelihoods. He did not give any estimate of how much this might cost.

Sharmarke said the same principles had been used to great effect in other troubled places that harboured threats to UK national security such as Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked why they had never been tried in Somalia.

By Daniel Wallis
Cape Times

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Somalia's security minister killed in attack

Somalia's security minister has been killed in a suicide bombing at a hotel in Beledweyne, just north of the capital, Mogadishu, the country's information minister and witnesses have said.

Somalia's ambassador to South Africa and at least nine other people were also thought to have been killed in the blast on Thursday, reports said.

Farhan Ali Mohamud, the information minister, announced the death of Omar Hashi Aden, the security minister, but declined to give any other details.

Hashi had moved to Beledweyne at the beginning of June with heavily-armed troops in an attempt to regain territory from fighters of the al-Shabab group.

Al-Shabab, which Washington claims has ties to al-Qaeda, has vowed to topple the Somali government led by of Sharif Ahmed, the president.

A doctor from a nearby hospital said that most of the dead have been burnt beyond recognition.
Ahmed blamed al-Shabab for the attack and confirmed Hashi's death.

"I am sending condolences to the family of the Security Minister Omar Hashi who was killed in an explosion in Baladwayne," Ahmed told reporters.

Mohamed Abdi, a shopkeeper near the hotel, said smoke was rising from the building.
Hotel Medina, the scene of the blast, is known to be frequented by members of Somalia's government.

A senior al-Shabab official had warned after a deadly suicide car bomb attack on police headquarters in Mogadishu on May 25 that there would be more suicide strikes in the near future.

Beledweyne is the capital of the central Somalian region of Hiran, which is close to the border with Ethiopia.

Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991 when former Mohamed Siad Barre, the former president, was overthrown, plunging the country into chaos.

Source: Al jazeera

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UN aid workers seized in Somalia

Gunmen in southern Somalia have kidnapped four UN aid workers, three of them foreigners, reports say.

They are said to have been seized in their car while travelling to the airstrip near Wajid, 340km (210 miles) north-west of the capital Mogadishu.

They were on a stopover between Puntland in northern Somalia and their destination of Kenya, a UN official told AFP news agency.

The nationalities of the three foreign aid workers have not been released. In Somalia, armed gangs have kidnapped and killed a number of aid workers and journalists.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991.

Islamist insurgents are in control of most of southern Somalia and former Islamist leader was recently elected President and trying to create a National Unity GovernmentPuntland is a semi-autonomous region, which has been relatively stable.

Source: Agencies

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PM wins vote-of-confidence, deals blow to President

BAIDOA, Somalia Dec 15 (Garowe Online)

Somalia's interim Prime Minister, Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein, decisively won a vote-of-confidence motion on Monday after lawmakers approved his new Cabinet, Radio Garowe reported.

Prime Minister Nur Adde addressed 165 MPs at ADC Hall in Baidoa, the seat of parliament, where he defended his administration's one-year record and accused President Abdullahi Yusuf of being an obstacle to peace.

"The President refused his constitutional duty to approve the Cabinet," Prime Minister Nur Adde said, while formally requesting lawmakers to vote on the new Cabinet list.

Sheikh Adan "Madobe" Mohamed, the Speaker, later announced the vote results: 143 MPs approved, 20 rejected and two MPs abstained.

The vote is a blow to President Yusuf, a day after he announced that Prime Minister Nur Adde was fired. READ: Somalia's government thrown into crisis after President 'fires PM'.

It is not clear how Yusuf will respond to Nur Adde's political victory, a clear sign that the Somali government's Western backers now favor Nur Adde's reconciliatory approach to the Islamist opposition as opposed to Yusuf's hawkish politics

Source: Garowe Online

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Somali PM says he cannot be sacked by the President

MOGADISHU, Dec. 14 (Xinhua)

Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussien Sunday rejected the decision by President Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed to sack him, heightening a growing political crisis in Somalia.

Speaking in the southern town of Baidoa, Hussien said that the president has no "legal authority" to sack him and that he would continue to serve in his capacity as prime minister.

"I do not accept the president's announcement today that he sacked me as prime minister because he does not have that legal authority in our charter," the prime minister said at a press conference in the southern Somali town of Baidoa, the seat of the parliament.

Hussein said that it was for the parliament to decide on the "constitutional breach" of president's decision to sack him early on Sunday after the president accused him of mismanagement and incompetence.

The two senior Somali leaders have been in deep disagreement over variety of issues including the way Somali national reconciliation is being handled by Hussein who has been spearheading peace talks with a faction of the Somali opposition.

The two leaders also disagreed last month over the appointment of new ministers in Hussein's cabinet.

Yusuf refused to endorse the new ministers appointed by the prime minister, following the resignation of 10 pro-president ministers who were excluded from the newly nominated cabinet.

The UN-brokered peace talks in neighboring Djibouti have led to a power sharing deal, but President Yusuf has expressed dissatisfaction with the agreement, characterizing it as "a clan deal."

Under the agreement, the current transitional parliament will be doubled, the government's interim period extended and a new leadership for the war-torn Horn of Africa country is to be elected at the beginning of the new year.

Source: Xinhua.

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Somali president "sacks" government

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the president of Somalia, has dismissed the transitional government led by Nur Hassan Hussein, the prime minister.

"As of now, I have sacked the prime minister and his current government and I will nominate a new prime minister within days," Yusuf said on Sunday at a news conference in the town of Baidoa, where the government is based.

The government of Nur Hassan Hussein was unable to perform its duties and I am obliged to save the country," he said.

Hussein became prime minister in November 2007 but has disagreed with Yusuf, mostly notably over ongoing peace talks with opposition groups and the make up of a new cabinet.

"The president was speaking in his usual personal capacity, contrary to the rules and regulations, as he is not mandated to sack the prime minister of the transitional federal government," Hussein said after Yusuf announced his decision.

Parliamentary approval

Under the transitional federal charter, the president needs the parliament's approval to sack the prime minister.But Yusuf expressed confidence that MPs would back his decision.

"Most of the parliamentarians will endorse my decision to dismiss the prime minister," he said.

"Should parliament reject my desire to look for a new prime minister, I will comply with their decision and the current government will continue its tenure."

Dr Yusuf al-Hazari, a political and legal adviser to the president, told Al Jazeera that Yusuf had the right to remove the prime minister if he failed to form a cabinet within the time limit set by the constitution.

"That is always one month and he couldn't establish or form the cabinet ... Nur Hussein could not compose it in two months and 16 days," he said.

Last month, Hussein blamed the president, who has been head of state since the inception of the transitional government in 2004, for the problems in the government due to his refusal to approve new ministers.

Leaders in the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), made up of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia, had called for the new cabinet to be named at a meeting in October.

Government struggles

Hussein replaced Ali Mohamed Gedi who was forced to resign after months of a struggles with Yusuf.

In 2008, he survived a vote of no confidence after some legislators accused him of embezzling state funds.

The transitional government in Somalia has struggled to enforce its control over the chaotic country and in 2006 needed assistance from the Ethiopian military to retake large areas of the country controlled by the Islamic Courts Union.

Since then government forces and their Ethiopian allies have come under near daily attack as the oppostion fighters have gradually re-established their influence.

In November, Yusuf said the government was "on the verge of total collapse" after opposition fighters retook control of large areas of the country.

Source: Al jazeera.

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Freedom Fighters Miriam Makeba left us

Miriam Makeba, Mama Afrika for all of us, was born in a shantytown outside of Johannesburg on March 4, 1932 and died on November 9th 2008 at the age of 76 after collapsing on stage during her last performance. A concert against camorra dedicated to Roberto Saviano held in Castelvolturno, near the southern Italian town of Naples.

Nelson Mandela wrote a note defining her the mother of the anti apartheid fight: “She was the South African first lady of music and she deserves to be remembered as Mama Afrika. She was the mother of our fight and of our young nation”.

Her morgue was visited by a procession of common people, immigrants and politicians. She is now part of our community and she is become a symbol of the struggle against camorra, says Francesco Nuzzo, mayor of Castelvolturno.

Miriam spent all her life fighting for civil rights and it is not by accident that she died in Castevolturno, a place that has become the emblem of those who are against criminality and oppression in Italy. She wanted at any cost to take part to the demonstration to support Saviano, even though she knew her health was precarious, and she gave her life for this cause.

Makeba was famous all over the world for her music and her political consciousness. She was a delegate of UN and her beliefs, enlarged by her fame as a singer, caused the reaction of the South African Government that in 1963 decided she had to go to exile and banned all her records. She could go back to her country only 30 years later, thanks to Mandela.

Her exile was the climax of her artistic career, spent in Europe and the States. In America she married Stokely Carmichael, who was also a militant for civil rights. This caused a scandal and her career felt the effects of it. After that she went to live in Guinea and than back in Europe.

In 2005 she decided to disappear from the scene and gave her last memorable tour all over the biggest cities of the world.

But her destiny was to sing in public once again, and to do it in Castelvolturno, demonstrating against camorra and for the oppressed, in front of a lot of people who had come to listen to her last concert.

We are honored to have had this great opportunity, grazie Miriam.

Valentina Belmuso

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Ceasefire and Ethiopian pullout from Somalia

DJIBOUTI CITY, Djibouti Oct 26

Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the main opposition group, the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), finalized a peace agreement Sunday after formally signing a ceasefire deal that called for the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces.

An official ceasefire will formally go into effect on November 5, 2008, and Ethiopian troops will begin withdrawing from different parts of Somalia, starting on November 21, 2008, the agreement read.

The Ethiopian army pullout will be centered on Mogadishu and Beletwein, with the army relocating from bases such as Mogadishu Stadium, the ex-pasta factory and the former headquarters of the Somali Ministry of Defense.

The second phase of an Ethiopian withdrawal will last for 120 days, the signed document read, but is not specified when the pullout count down will start.

The agreement indicated that a joint TFG-ARS security force will be promptly established to work with African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu to maintain order, following the eventual withdrawal Ethiopian troops.

The deal was rejected by the second group of ARS based in Asmara, Eritrea, who said it would have no effect on the ground.

"The agreement reached in Djibouti on Sunday is an illusion to deceive the Somalis. Neither the international community nor Ethiopia itself announced the complete withdrawal of Ethiopian troops," said Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, leader of a breakaway faction of ARS.

It remained unclear when exactly the last Ethiopian troops would leave Somali territory.

Despite the peace deal, heavy fighting between Islamists and government forces killed dozens including a local al Shabaab commander over the weekend.

Hussein.

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Italy: First black Italian-Somali Azzurro from district where Chinese attacked

(ANSA) - Rome, October 3 - The first black footballer to play for Italy on Friday joined the growing chorus of voices warning that the country could be facing an epidemic of racism.

''As an Italian I am ashamed,'' veteran Palermo midfielder Fabio Liverani told ANSA after the latest in a series of apparently racist attacks the previous day.

Liverani, 32, a half-Somali who made history by turning out for Italy in 2001, noted that he was from the same working-class Rome district, Tor Bella Monaca, where Thursday's assault on a Chinese man occurred.

The ex-Lazio and Fiorentina player said he had noticed a rise in intolerance.
''It's like we've travelled 60 years back in time. And the level of violence is rising. When I was a boy I suffered some episodes of racism but it was essentially verbal''.

''Just when we thought some progress was being made things are going backwards. I used to hang out in that area. It was a place that had managed to clean itself up, but now this''.

The Chinese immigrant, 36-year-old Tong Hongsheng, was beaten up by a group of teenagers.
An eye witness told police Tong was on his way home when he was surrounded by a group of five or six teenagers who shouted racist slurs before breaking his nose and inflicting other injuries.

One of Tong's attackers went to Rome city hall with his father Friday to apologise to Mayor Gianni Alemanno for the incident.

Police said the same group attacked two 30-year-old Ivory Coast immigrants last week after shouting racist insults.

Also on Friday, graffiti insulting Anne Frank appeared in another Rome suburb. In another part of Rome someone recently daubed anti-Semitic slogans against Senate Speaker Renato Schifani, who is Jewish.

Insulting graffiti were also found near Milan Friday about a Romanian boy who burned to death in a shanty last week.

Italian human rights groups and the Catholic Church have for months been sounding the alarm over what they say is growing intolerance of immigrants in Italian society.

Earlier this week a case in Parma made headlines when a young student from Ghana was allegedly beaten up by traffic police who reportedly mistook him for a drugs pusher.

Last month an immigrant from Burkina Faso who ran out of a Milan store with a packet of biscuits was killed by the shopkeeper who allegedly beat him to death with an iron bar after hurling racist insults.

The death brought thousands of African immigrants onto the streets of Milan in protest.
Earlier last month the African community in Castel Volturno near Naples rioted after the Camorra mafia mowed down three Ghanaians, two Togo nationals and a Liberian.

A poll of readers of the left-leaning newspaper La Repubblica on Thursday found 86% agreeing with the proposition that Italy has ''a racism emergency''.

This summer the Italian government was widely accused of racism because of a survey of Roma (gypsy) camps which included the fingerprinting of children.

The government insisted the census - which was eventually OK'd by the European Commission - was not aimed against any specific ethnic group or spurred by a wave of crime-linked anti-immigrant feeling.

In the face of protests, Italy agreed with the European Union to make sure the scheme complied with human rights norms.

It also announced it would require all Italian citizens to have their prints put on ID cards starting in 2010.

But the Council of Europe (CE), Europe's rights body, claimed that Italian politicians had lacked ''the moral leadership'' to face down the kind of anti-gypsy sentiment that led to incidents such as the torching of camps in Naples in June.

Hussein Aden

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Mortar attack on Somali market by Government and Ethiopeans kills 30

The fighting began after Islamic insurgents fired mortars at the capital's main airport and the presidential palace, said Ali Mohamed Siyad, who chairs Bakara market traders' association. Soon after, government forces and their Ethiopian allies retaliated with mortars and gunfire.

Mortars slammed into a market in Somalia's capital Monday, killing up to 30 people including children and overwhelming hospitals with dozens of wounded in the worst fighting in months, witnesses said.

The violence — shocking even for this chaotic country in the Horn of Africa — comes as Islamic insurgents who want to topple the government appear to be gaining significant power. The government, which has failed to assert any real control since it was formed in 2004, had no immediate comment on the bloodshed.

At least 60 were wounded, including nine children, according to Dr. Dahir Dhere of Medina Hospital.

There is blood everywhere, and human flesh on the walls," Abshir Mohamed Ali, a shop owner at Mogadishu's Bakara market, where much of the fighting was centered, told The Associated Press.

Seven members of one family — a mother, grandmother, four children and an uncle — were among the dead, according to a Sahal Mohamed Ali, who was attending the funeral.

"Only the 2-year-old child survived this disaster, with minor injuries," Ali said by telephone from the funeral.

Siyad said he and other workers had counted about 30 bodies. Other witnesses described at least 19.

Islamic militants have been fighting the government and its Ethiopian allies for control since their combined forces pushed the Islamists from the capital in December 2006. But the government has failed to deliver any basic services, is riddled with corruption and comes under daily attack.

Thousands of civilians have died in the fighting and hundreds of thousands more have fled Mogadishu, contributing to a massive humanitarian emergency. In addition, foreigners, journalists and humanitarian workers are frequently abducted for ransoms in Somalia.


Hussein Aden

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Sadness Come back to me - Al Shabab militants 'behind' the deadly Kampala World Cup blasts

The Somali Islamist group al-Shabab has said it was behind twin blasts which hit the Ugandan capital Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people.

A spokesman for the group, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, threatened more attacks in a statement in Mogadishu.

Police said the bombings targeted football fans watching the World Cup final.

A Ugandan official said a Somali's head was found at the scene of one blast, and he may have been a suicide bomber.

Ugandan peacekeepers are in Somalia, and al-Shabab has previously threatened Kampala.

"Al-Shabab was behind the two bomb blasts in Uganda," Ali Mohamud Rage said.


"We thank the mujahideen that carried out the attack. We are sending a message to Uganda and Burundi, if they do not take out their Amisom [African Union Mission in Somalia] troops from Somalia, blasts will continue and it will happen in Bujumbura [the Burundi capital] too."

The explosions, which also injured about 70 people, ripped through a rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant as football fans watched the last few minutes of the World Cup final.

Foreigners killed

The deadliest of the blasts was at the crowded rugby club. At both locations chairs lay overturned, with blood and pieces of flesh on the floor.

A government spokesman said on Monday that at least 28 Ugandans were killed in the explosions.

Fred Opolot, quoted by the Reuters news agency, said an Irish woman was among those who died at the restaurant.

Officials said the dead and wounded also included Ethiopian, Eritrean, Indian and Congolese nationals.

Mr Opolot added that the other victims had not yet been identified.

Aware of threat

Ugandan Internal Affairs Minister Matia Kasaija told the BBC World Today programme that the severed head of a person from Somalia had been identified at the scene of one blast.

He said Uganda had been aware of the threat, but had been caught off-guard.

About 5,000 African Union troops from Uganda and Burundi are based in Mogadishu, propping up the fragile interim government.

The Amisom force is engaged in frequent firefights with the Islamist insurgents that control much of southern and central Somalia.

American dead

The attack on the Ethiopian restaurant also fits in with al-Shabab's regional policy.

Addis Ababa backs Somalia's government against the rebels. And Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in 2006 to oust an Islamist movement, stoking an insurgency that still rages.

BBC East Africa correspondent Peter Greste says security services across the region will now be reassessing how they can protect themselves from a force that has proven itself willing and capable of striking outside Somalia's borders.

Many - if not most - of those killed and injured in the Kampala blasts were foreign nationals. Both venues are popular destinations for expatriates living in the capital.

One unnamed witness told the BBC how he was caught in the rugby club blast.

"I just heard the bomb. In fact, I blacked out... when I gained consciousness, then I started now, crawling, coming out," he said.

California-based aid group Invisible Children, which helps child soldiers, said one of its workers, Nate Henn, 25, was among those killed at the rugby club.

At least three Americans, members of a Church group from Pennsylvania, were wounded at the Ethiopian restaurant.

One, Kris Sledge, 18, of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, said from his hospital bed: "I remember blacking out, hearing people screaming and running."

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni criticised the attackers and said his country would not "run away" from its commitments in Mogadishu.

"People who are watching football are not people who should be targeted. If they [attackers] want a fight, they should go and look for soldiers."

US President Barack Obama said the explosions were "deplorable and cowardly".

The African Union has said the attacks will not affect its summit, which is due to be held in Kampala later this month.



Source: BBC

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Somali government base attacked

Insurgents in Somalia have launched a rocket and mortar attack on the southern town of Baidoa, seat of the transitional parliament. It was the first time Baidoa, the only town fully under government control, had been attacked since late 2006.

A soldier was killed and six people wounded in the attack on the airport and presidential palace, witnesses say. Al-Shabab, a radical wing of the Islamist Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, claimed responsibility.

The attack comes on the eve of the coming into effect of a ceasefire signed by the government and one Islamist leader last week. Al-Shabab refuses to abide by the ceasefire, until Ethiopian troops leave the country.

Ethiopia helped the government oust Islamists from Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia in 2006. A military official said insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns had been fought off with anti-aircraft guns at checkpoints in the north and south of the city.

It is the heaviest we have witnessed for many years, the fighting sent flash lights over the city and rocked us, we kept ducking for nearly an hour," said resident Sahra Ali. Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow told reporters his men had been behind the attack.

"Our fighters have attacked Baidoa and inflicted heavy losses to the so-called government soldiers and the Ethiopians," he said. "This was a signal showing that Baidoa is no longer safe."

The al-Shabab spokesman also said that a ceasefire signed last month between the government and opposition groups "would never go into effect". "There will not be a ceasefire and we will not negotiate with any side while Allah's enemy [Ethiopia] is on our soil, and as long as the puppet regime of [President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed] claims leadership," he said.

The three-month ceasefire pact was signed by a top Islamist leader, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and Prime Minister Nur Adde. But another prominent Islamist leader, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, rejected the deal. Mr Aweys is a founder of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) that ruled much of Somalia in 2006, before being ousted by Ethiopian forces backed by Somali government troops.

Al-Shabab is the UIC's youth wing, whose fighters have been behind much of the violence against the Ethiopian and Somali troops. Somalia has experienced almost constant civil conflict since the collapse of Mohamed Siad Barre's regime in January 1991. Political violence has surged in recent months.

Last week, gunmen killed the head of the UN Development Programme as he left a mosque in the capital, Mogadishu. Insurgents also launched lethal attacks against government and Ethiopian troops in the capital and the centre of the country.

The UN has warned that nearly half of Somalia's population is likely to require aid later this year.


Suorce: BBC

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Mbeki sorry for S Africa violence

Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, has apologised for the recent xenophobic violence in the country and said that it must never be repeated.

Mbeki spoke on Thursday at a ceremony in honour of the 62 people who died in the violence in May.

He said that the nation's citizens have their heads "bowed in shame" and will work to ensure that those who fled the violence can resume their lives in South Africa.

The ceremony was organised by the government.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly migrants, were displaced during the violence. Thousands have returned to their home nations, such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

About 13,000 remain in refuge camps set up by the government, which has been criticised for doing too little to help victims.

The government has said that the camps will be closed by the end of July.

Kalay Maistry, Al Jazeera's correspondent at the Ramaphosa settlement in South Africafrom where many people fled violence, said that the government was doing little more to placate the anger some South Africans have towards foreigners.

Maistry said that the majority of those targeted in the violence do not yet feel safe enough to return to their homes.

Emma Macave, a camp resident, told her: "How can you live where you don't feel safe? The person behind you could attack you."

The violence in May pitted poor South Africans against poor migrants. The locals accused migrants of taking scarce jobs and housing from them.



Suorce: Aljazeera

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AAAS: Satellites confirm Destruction of Towns, Houses in Ogaden

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images confirm reports that the Ethiopian military has burned towns and villages in the remote Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, the American Association for the Advancement of Science reported on Thursday.

Eight sites in the rocky, arid region, which borders Somalia, have clear signs of burning and other destruction, the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program said.

The commercially available images corroborate a report by Human Rights Watch, also issued on Thursday, that uses eyewitness accounts of attacks on tens of thousands of ethnic-Somali Muslims living in the area, the AAAS said.

"The Ethiopian authorities frequently dismiss human rights reports, saying that the witnesses we interviewed are liars and rebel supporters," Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"But it will be much more difficult for them to dismiss the evidence presented in the satellite images, as images like that don't lie," he said.

Ethiopia, a key regional ally of the United States, launched its latest offensive after the Ogaden National Liberation Front attacked a Chinese-run oil field in the region in April 2007, killing more than 70 people.

Ethiopian government officials in Addis Ababa routinely reject allegations against their counter-insurgency operations and accuse the rebels of abusing locals.

Lars Bromley, project director for the Science and Human Rights Program at AAAS, said his team analyzed several before and after satellite images of villages identified by Human Right Watch as possible locations of human rights violations.

For example, in the town of Labigah, 40 structures identified in a September 2005 image were gone in images taken in February 2008. In the Human Rights Watch report an eyewitness said the Ethiopian army "went into every village and set it on fire."

Such reports are nearly impossible to corroborate because the region "may well be the most isolated place on earth, save perhaps the densest parts of the Congolese or Amazon rain forests," Bromley said.

It is also difficult to tell what is going on in some villages, AAAS said.

"While some towns are considered permanent, they can grow and shrink over the course of a year due to fluctuations in nomadic populations, and many smaller villages will relocate altogether," the report reads.

"To ensure the most accurate results, AAAS for the most part sought to review only permanent towns in the Ogaden, as indicated by their location along a well-defined road and by the presence of square structures with metal-sheet or brick roofing, and most often including a mosque."

AAAS has used satellite images to support reports of widespread abuses in Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Burma, Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan.

The report is available on the Internet at http://shr.aaas.org/.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by David Wiessler)

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Ethiopian army slit throats in Somali mosque: Amnesty

NAIROBI (Reuters)
By Andrew Cawthorne April 23, 2008

Amnesty International accused Ethiopian soldiers on Wednesday of killing 21 people, including an imam and several Islamic scholars, at a Mogadishu mosque and said seven of the victims had their throats slit.

The rights group said the soldiers had also captured dozens of children during the raid on the Al Hidaaya mosque in the north of the Somali capital earlier this week during operations against Islamist insurgents.

Ethiopia has thousands of soldiers in neighbouring Somalia to bolster a Western-backed government against rebels fighting an Iraq-style insurgency in the Horn of Africa nation.

The Ethiopian and Somali governments have not responded publicly to accusations of atrocities at the mosque. But they have frequently denied abusing human rights in the fight against groups they call al Qaeda-backed terrorists.

Amnesty said those killed at the mosque included imam Sheikh Saiid Yaha and several scholars of the moderate Tabligh group that operated there.

"Eye-witnesses report that those killed inside the mosque were unarmed civilians taking no active part in hostilities," Amnesty said. "Seven of the 21 were reported to have died after their throats were cut -- a form of extra-judicial execution practiced by Ethiopian forces in Somalia."

Some moderate Islamist leaders have reacted to the mosque incident, and a recent upsurge of fighting in Mogadishu, by postponing plans to join U.N.-sponsored peace talks.

More than 100 people have been killed since the weekend in clashes in the coastal capital, and the takeover of several small towns by the Islamists' militant al Shabaab wing.

Washington last month put al Shabaab on its terrorism list.

MORE CORPSES

Amnesty urged the Ethiopian military to release all 41 children it said were held after the mosque raid.

"Witnesses have told Amnesty International that Ethiopian forces would only release the children from their military base in north Mogadishu 'once they had been investigated' and 'if they were not terrorists'," it said.

Some of the children -- whose ages were as low as nine -- were reported to have been freed, though the majority were still in custody, Amnesty's statement added.

Various witnesses told Reuters they had seen beheaded bodies lying outside the mosque after the fighting.

Another four corpses showed up in Mogadishu on Thursday, at the compound of the SOS children's hospital that had also been occupied by Ethiopian troops during clashes at the weekend.

"The Ethiopian troops who occupied SOS hospital since the weekend left last night taking the hospital's food and cooking oil with them and they also damaged the properties of the hospital," SOS security officer Abey Saney Osman told Reuters.

"There are four dead bodies, one inside and three others outside the gate of the compound. We are now inside the hospital and trying to sort all the mess," he said by phone.

An SOS employee, laboratory technician Mohammed Faagte, told Reuters a colleague died and four others were wounded while trying to flee the hospital when the fighting began.

Civilians have borne the burnt of Somalia's near-incessant violence since the 1991 toppling of a dictator.

About one million of the nation's 9 million population live as refugees in their own land.

Source: Reuters

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Ethiopian soldiers blamed for mosque massacre in Somalia

MOGADISHU, Somalia Apr 21 (Garowe Online)

Ethiopian soldiers deployed in southern Somalia are responsible for a brutal killing at a mosque in the capital Mogadishu yesterday, witnesses and confidential sources said.

Residents in Mogadishu's Huriwa district buried dead victims from two days of intense fighting in the capital between Islamist-led insurgents and Ethiopian troops backing the country's weak secular government.

A witness named Omar told Garowe Online that he was inside al Hidaya Mosque in Huriwa district when Ethiopian soldiers stormed inside on Sunday.

"The first person they [Ethiopian soldiers] killed was Sheikh Said Yahya, the Imam [prayer leader]," Omar said, adding that the late Imam opened the mosque door after the soldiers knocked.

"I stood above 11 dead bodies, some with their throat slit and others shot to death," said the witness describing the gruesome scene. Of the 11 dead victims, nine were regular congregants at the mosque and reportedly were part of the Tabliiq wing of Sunni Islam.

A source who took part in Monday's effort to bury the dead victims privately told Garowe Online that some of the victims had their hands cut off and their backs broken.

Another source who was arrested by Ethiopian soldiers yesterday at al Hidaya Mosque and released today said the soldiers ordered him and other detainees not to return to the mosque.

"They accused us [detainees] of attacking them [Ethiopian soldiers] and said that we were trained at the [al Hidaya] mosque," said the source who did not want his name in print.

It is not clear why Ethiopian troops attacked al Hidaya Mosque, which is frequented by Tabliiq congregants who are reportedly not involved in the insurgency.

Upwards of 80 people were killed over the weekend in Mogadishu, according to the Elman Human Rights group.

Mogadishu-area hospitals said more than 120 wounded people have been admitted since Friday, according to an inquiry by Garowe Online.

Somali Prime Minister Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein defended the military operation in Huriwa district, telling the international media that Somali and Ethiopian troops will "defend themselves as they come under constant attack." [ Full story]

Somalia's Ethiopian-backed interim government is attempting to restore national order since its establishment in 2004. But the government has faced armed resistance since January 2007 led by remnants of an Islamist movement that once ruled Mogadishu.

Source: Garowe Online

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81 Die in Clashes Between Islamists and Troops in Somalia

20 Apr 20, 2008 - 9:25:44 PM

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP)

Sporadic street fighting between Ethiopian troops and Islamist fighters trying to bring down Somalia’s shaky government killed 81 people in the past two days, the head of a local human rights group said Sunday.

The deaths were caused when Ethiopians fired heavy artillery and tank shells in residential areas of Mogadishu, said the rights leader, Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairman of Elman Human Rights. “We condemn this latest fighting,” he said.

Besides the 81 people who were killed, 119 were wounded, he said. His group said that all of those killed were civilians, but witnesses said that because the insurgents wear civilian clothing, it was impossible to say how many of the dead were noncombatants.

The rights group tracks casualties through hospitals and morgues and puts out regular reports on the toll from Somalia’s fighting. Its figures could not be independently verified. Ethiopian officials could not be reached for comment on the group’s claim that shelling from their forces had caused the casualties.

The clashes on Sunday broke out in rubble-strewn streets still littered with the bodies of people killed the previous day.

A witness, Aden Shire, said the Ethiopians had seemed to be searching for the bodies of fellow soldiers killed Saturday. Another witness, Omar Abdulahi, said that among the dead he counted were two old men in their homes who had been shot by Ethiopian soldiers.

A woman, Nasteho Moalim, said her 7-year-old daughter and three neighbors had been killed, and her husband wounded, by tank shells that hit their homes.

On the government’s side, at least one Somali soldier and two Ethiopians were killed, said another witness, Asha Shegow Abikar.

The prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, addressed the growing toll of civilian deaths during the latest outbreak of fighting.

“The government is sorry about the fighting and loss of innocent civilian lives,” he said at a news conference on Sunday. “Our aim is to restore law and order through reconciliation and peaceful means, but that does not mean our troops and those of our ally Ethiopia will not defend themselves as they come under constant attack.”

Ethiopian troops supporting the transitional government’s soldiers ousted Islamist fighters from power in Mogadishu, the capital, in December 2006. The Islamists receive support from Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator and then turned on one another.

Source: AP

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Conflict spells disaster for whole of East Africa

Kenya's political meltdown is threatening its economic lifeline to Somalia and other neighbouring countries and disrupting the supply of desperately needed relief aid.

The economies of landlocked states such as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, which rely on Kenya's trade links via its Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, are already being hit by the effects of the unrest. Goods are piling up in Mombasa amid fears of blockages along the main road to Nairobi.

Other arteries including the roads from the capital to the western city of Kisumu and the highway between Nakuru and Eldoret have also been blocked. Guillermo Bettocci, the Somalia representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, expressed concern about the cancellation of flights at Nairobi airport, which is used to fly out supplies to Somalia.

He described the situation in Somalia, where fierce fighting has resumed between Islamic fighters and Ethiopian forces sent to prop up a transitional government, as "the world's worst humanitarian disaster" which he said had now overtaken Darfur in terms of a humanitarian emergency. A total of one million people have been displaced inside Somalia by the conflict, including 250,000 in Mogadishu alone.

"The whole environment is going to be much more difficult," Mr Bettocci added, mentioning fuel prices which have jumped in Kenya as a result of the unrest.

Uganda is already reporting fuel shortages, with the main road to the country passing through the Kenyan towns which read like a roll call of death: Naivasha, Nakuru and Kisumu. To make matters worse, vandals last week tore up about a mile of track along the main Kenya to Uganda railway line in the Nairobi slum of Kibera – apparently a deliberate attack to protest against the fact that President Yoweri Museveni was the first president to congratulate President Mwai Kibaki on his re-election.

Ugandan manufacturers have complained that they have lost $34m (£17m) through the disruption of Uganda's external trade.

Anne Penketh
Source: Belfast Telegraph

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African Union Unveils Road Map for Peace in Somalia

The African Union's top security official has presented Somalia's leaders a four-point plan for creating stability in the war-ravaged country. From the Somali capital, Mogadishu, VOA's Peter Heinlein reports the plan's ultimate goal is to entice the United Nations to take over peacekeeping duties from beleaguered Ethiopian and African Union troops.

During a four-hour visit to Mogadishu Wednesday, AU Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit said Somalia is becoming Africa's biggest security challenge. He described his stopover as a symbolic show of support for Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, just days after the prime minister moved his government back to the embattled capital from the more secure city of Baidoa.

But as if to underscore the continuing tensions, suspected Islamic insurgents fired four mortar rounds within a few hundred meters of Mogadishu's airport runway while Djinnit's plane was on the ground. Several other rounds landed just outside the prime minister's residence shortly after Djinnit left.

The commissioner's visit also came days before an African Union summit, at which the issue of Somalia's security will be high on the agenda.

Djinnit said he outlined to Mr. Hussain a proposal to initiate a road map that would be developed by Somali leaders in partnership with the international community.

Its four components would include strengthening the fractured nation's political process through reconciliation, greater international involvement in peacekeeping operations, creating a safe environment for humanitarian aid deliveries, and building the capacity of federal government institutions to face the immense challenges ahead.

The commissioner expressed frustration at what he called the lack of international support for efforts to bring a stable peace to Somalia. He told reporters his eventual goal, and biggest concern, is persuading the U.N. Security Council to re-establish the peacekeeping mission it abandoned in the face of uncontrolled violence 13 years ago.

"It is the issue at the heart of our concerns," said Said Djinnit. "We believe Somalia has been abandoned for so long , and the Security Council remains the principal body in charge of the maintenance of international peace and security, and Somalia is becoming the biggest challenge for security in Africa. And therefore the Security Council cannot but assume its responsibility vis a vis Somalia."

Djinnit chided the Security Council for its recent statement saying it was "reiterating its commitment to considering the possibility of deploying" a Somalia peacekeeping operation.

"If you look to ideal situation where peace is prevailing before deploying a peacekeeping operation, you might not get that ideal situation," he said. "So we are therefore calling for flexibility on the part of the United Nations in considering the situation in Somalia and in deciding as early as possible on the deployment of the peacekeeping operation to come and take over from the African Union."

The African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, has an authorized strength of 8,000. But nearly a year after it was formed, less than one-quarter of the troops are in place. Officials say that is far too few to stop the raging violence in and around Mogadishu.
A larger contingent of Ethiopian army troops is backing Somali's military in its campaign against Islamic insurgents. The presence of Ethiopian soldiers, however, has become a rallying point for insurgents, fueling more violence.

Ethiopia's prime Minister Meles Zenawi has repeatedly said he wants those troops replaced by a strong international force. But with Somalia among the world's most violent and gun-infested countries, and the United Nations balking at sending a peacekeeping mission, Prime Minister Hussein told reporters it is premature to set a date when Ethiopean troops could withdraw.

"To set a time maybe today it's not so easy, but you can see the efforts of the African Union, you can see the efforts of AMISOM [African Mission in Somalia] from time to time increasing their troops, and this will definitely set a way for us to discuss when and how the Ethiopian troops will be reduced," said Hussein. "So what we will try to do is have a very well-elaborated exit strategy."

Somalia's parliament chose Prime Minister Hussein last November to replace his predecessor Ali Mohamed Gedi, who was forced out in a dispute with President Abdullahi Yusuf. A career public servant and former head of Somalia's Red Crescent Society, Hussein is widely seen as a neutral figure who might be able to bring unity to a country that has been considered virtually ungovernable since 1991, when former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted.

Peter Heinlein
Source: VOA

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Liberia: Virtual Eyes On Taylor Trial

After a delay of six months, the Charles Taylor case resumed at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on Jan. 7. The former president of Liberia is charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2001), including murder, rape, enslavement, acts of terrorism and the recruitment of child soldiers.

Taylor has pleaded 'not guilty' on all counts.

The prosecution, lead by chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp, wishes to prove the involvement of Charles Ghankay Taylor (59) in alleged crimes of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), two warring factions who fought for control over the country and access to diamond fields.

It is the first time that an African president is being tried before an International court."It is an important case in many respects," prosecutor Rapp told IPS. Taylor's arrest and transfer to the court "sent a powerful message across the world that there is no escaping justice," he said.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was established in 2002 by the Sierra Leonean Government and the United Nations. It is a 'hybrid court', consisting of national and international officials, which "tries those who bear greatest responsibility for violating international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law in the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996." Thirteen persons have so far been indicted, ten are facing trial.

The SCSL resides in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, but has relocated this case to the facilities of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for security reasons.When Taylor was indicted in 2003, he was offered exile in Nigeria. In 1996, newly elected president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf requested Nigeria to hand him over. Taylor immediately disappeared, but was apprehended on the Nigerian-Cameroon border on March 29, 2006. He was taken into UN Custody in Sierra Leone, and eventually transported to the Netherlands. The trial began Jun. 4, 2007.

The proceedings were delayed in June because Taylor had boycotted the case and had sent away his lawyers. Taylor's new attorney, Courtenay Griffiths, asked for more time to prepare his defence.

In the past weeks, prosecution has presented expert witnesses, such as a Canadian Ian Smillie, who is knowledgeable on so-called 'blood diamonds'. These resources, smuggled through Liberia, allegedly provided Taylor money to arm the rebels.
A Sierra Leonean pastor was called in as crime-based witness, and described in detail a horrendous massacre. A former security guard of Taylor and a former fighter of AFRC were called in as 'linkage witnesses', to testify to alleged links between Taylor and crimes committed in Sierra Leone.

"[This trial] chips away at impunity that has all too often prevailed in human rights abuses, especially in West Africa," Elise Keppler, senior counsel of the International Justice Programme of Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS. HRW had previously lobbied for Taylor's surrender to face trial.

HRW and other organisations are also looking at fair trial rights. "It is critically important that Taylor receive a fair trial and be given a full range of protections, accorded under international fair trial standards, including the right to be presumed innocent," Keppler said.
"The defence is not contesting that crimes were committed in Sierra Leone, it is really the question of the linkage that will be the ultimate issue in the case," Keppler said.

Dr. Tim Kelsall, senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle, whose main research focuses on the culture of accountability in Africa, said he believed that putting an end to impunity can act as a deterrent to further destabilisation, but that it was also only a small part of the solution for West Africa.

"As long as the social-economic structure of these countries remains the same, there are going to be people who have the motivation and the incentives to risk going to war," Kelsall told IPS

The proceedings can be followed via online streaming, with a half-hour delay. Furthermore, a regularly updated blog has been set up with detailed summaries and transcripts of the trial. International justice experts supplement these with weekly reports, analyses and essays.

"We want to reach out to people in West Africa," Jennifer Maki, one of the attorneys at the international law firm Clifford Chance told IPS. CharlesTaylorTrial.org is a joint project of the firm, the Open Society Justice Initiative of the New York based Open Society Institute, and the International Senior Lawyers Project, also based in New York.

Mohamed Suma, programme director of the Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme, has advocated the trial be held in Sierra Leone. Although Suma said he approved of the proceedings so far, access is central to the case, he said.

Irene De Vette

The Hague

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