OT- Way to Go Ethiopa! Ethiopia attacks Somalian airports
- From: "Harvester of Sorrow" <chuckadams05@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 25 Dec 2006 21:16:27 -0800
Bush is right it looks like, The war on terror is global.
MOGADISHU, Somalia (Reuters) -- Ethiopian warplanes attacked two
Islamist-held airfields Monday in Somalia, including in the capital,
Mogadishu, in the most dramatic strikes yet of a war threatening to
engulf the Horn of Africa.
Witnesses said the attacks came hours after neighboring Ethiopia
formally declared war, saying it was protecting its sovereignty against
an Islamist movement.
Fighting raged for a seventh day near Daynunay, close to the town of
Baidoa, seat of Somalia's weak interim government that Ethiopia backs.
Witnesses reported truckloads of Ethiopian wounded being evacuated, and
Islamist soldiers were said to be reciting the Koran as they went into
battle.
A MiG fighter struck Mogadishu's international airport with machine-gun
fire soon after dawn, airport managing director Abdirahim Adan told
Reuters.
Three jets later attacked Somalia's biggest military airfield at
Baledogle, 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Mogadishu.
"They are targeting the runway, and I can see it being hit," said an
Islamist fighter who asked not to be named.
The week of intense fighting between Islamists and the Ethiopian- and
Western- backed secular interim government has turned long-running
hostilities into open war.
Analysts say Ethiopia seems to have halted the initial Islamist assault
and saved the government from being overrun.
The Somalia Islamic Courts Council's Web site hailed "mujahedeen"
troops who, it said, chanted passages from the Koran as they went into
battle against militarily superior Ethiopian "crusaders."
Addis Ababa and Washington say the Islamists, who hold most of southern
Somalia after seizing Mogadishu in June, are backed by al Qaeda and by
Ethiopia's enemy, Eritrea.
Ethiopia has vowed to protect the government, which is virtually
encircled by Islamist fighters in Baidoa, halfway between Mogadishu and
the Ethiopian border.
A government spokesman said the administration approved of the
Ethiopian use of air power. The government also said it had closed all
borders -- a largely symbolic measure given that it has little power
beyond Baidoa.
Ethiopia said it had attacked the capital's airport to stop "illegal
flights" following the closure of Somalia's borders.
"It was also reported some of the extremists were waiting for an
airlift out of Mogadishu," an Ethiopian spokesman said.
Aid agencies, struggling to get help to more than a million Somalis
afflicted by conflict and weeks of floods in one of the world's poorest
countries, said they had not been told about the closure of borders.
The Islamists accused Ethiopia of targeting civilians and repeated a
threat to attack its capital. "We shall strike Addis Ababa the way they
hit Mogadishu," Somalia Islamic Courts Council spokesman Abdirahman Ali
Mudey said. "These airstrikes will not continue ... even if it means
getting weapons from outside."
Government Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told Reuters 8,000 foreign
fighters had poured into Somalia to back the Somalia Islamic Courts
Council. He agreed with a recent U.S. accusation that the movement's
top ranks were controlled by al Qaeda.
Both sides say they have killed hundreds of opponents in days of
battles with mortars, rockets, machine guns and tanks, but there has
been no independent verification.
Residents said Ethiopian troops took control of Baladwayne town on
Monday after a day of bombing to uproot the Islamists.
Ethiopian forces also encircled the towns of Dinsoor and Buur Hakaba,
an Ethiopian military spokesman told Ethiopian television late Monday.
In nearby Baidoa, locals saw Ethiopian military trucks ferrying wounded
troops to the airport.
"I can see seven big trucks carrying wounded Ethiopian soldiers lying
on blood-stained mattresses," taxi driver Abdullahi Hassan told Reuters
by telephone.
The Islamists claim broad popular support and say their main aim is to
restore order to Somalia under sharia law after years of anarchy since
the 1991 ouster of dictator Siad Barre.
Addis Ababa fears a hard-line Muslim state on its doorstep and accuses
the Somalia Islamic Courts Council of wanting to annex Ethiopia's
ethnically Somali Ogaden region.
.
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