Somali Government Claims Victory

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: December 22, 2006
ZANZIBAR, Tanzania, Dec. 21 —
The transitional government of Somalia, which for several months had been rapidly losing territory to Somalia’s growing Islamist movement, claimed victory on Thursday in the first major confrontation between the sides.
“We have overrun their troops,” said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, chief of staff for the transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
United Nations officials confirmed heavy Islamist casualties in the fighting, which began Wednesday and continued Thursday.
The Islamist fighters — many of them lightly armed teenage boys, the officials said — were mowed down by transitional government soldiers backed by the Ethiopian Army, the most powerful military in the region.
“The Islamists attacked, they retreated and then they made the mistake of running into an open field,” a United Nations official said on the condition of anonymity. “After that, it was one shot, one kill.”
United Nations officials estimated that dozens of Islamists had died. The Islamists denied suffering humiliating defeats. On Thursday, the Islamist clerics who rule Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, ordered schools closed so more children could be sent to the front lines.
After initially playing down the fighting, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of the Islamist forces, announced Thursday over national radio that Somalia was at war and said, “All Somalis should take part in this struggle against Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia still denies that many of its soldiers are in Somalia, but has acknowledged sending military advisers. Ethiopia has cause to fear a strong Islamist movement next door. Christians have led Ethiopia for centuries, but about half of its population is Muslim, as are the vast majority of Somalis, and the Muslim areas have become more restive.
The fighting started early Wednesday as hundreds of Islamist fighters attacked the transitional government’s forces from two sides.
Witnesses said the transitional government, with help from Ethiopia, had repelled the Islamist advance in Daynunay, a town outside the government’s base in Baidoa. But in Diinsoor, near Baidoa, the battles were closely contested, and on Thursday, witnesses said each side continued to pound away with artillery, mortars and antiaircraft guns on pickup trucks.
Somalia has been in a state of anarchy since 1991, when the government collapsed in clan warfare. Backing the transitional government was an attempt by donor nations to help bring order, but more Somalis support the Islamists.
The two sides have talked of sharing power. European Union diplomats shuttled between Baidoa and Mogadishu on Wednesday. “The leaders on both sides want dialogue, but we’re not necessarily dealing with homogenous groups that always obey their leaders,” a European official said Thursday.