Somali Islamic Resistance Fighters Take Control of Port at Kismayu

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Corpses litter Somali port

23/08/2008 13:24 - (SA)

Kismayu - Bodies littered the streets of this strategic southern port in
Somalia on Saturday, a day after it was seized by Islamist rebels in
fighting that killed at least 70 people.

The loss of Kismayu to the al-Shabaab insurgents was another blow for
Somalia's interim government, which signed a peace deal with some
opposition figures last week that has only seemed to stoke violence in
the Horn of Africa nation.

"We are now collecting the corpses lying in the streets," resident
Mohamed Farah, 55, told Reuters.

"The town is calm today and we're busy burying the victims of the
fighting. The Islamists are at the abandoned sea and air ports, and
people here are hoping to reopen their businesses."

Since the start of last year, al-Shabaab rebels have been waging an
Iraq-style insurgency of mortar attacks, roadside bombings and
assassinations, targeting the fragile administration and its Ethiopian
military allies.

The artillery and gun battles that broke out on Wednesday around Kismayu
were the heaviest in the area for months. Medical workers said at least
140 people had been wounded.

Unidentified aircraft

Fearful residents said large, unidentified aircraft had been flying over
the area since then. "We don't know what will happen, but we are
scared," said another local man, Hussein Ahmed, 35.

It was not clear who sent the planes. The United States, which has
launched air strikes inside Somalia in recent months, officially listed
al-Shabaab earlier this year as a terrorist organisation with close ties
to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

Washington sees Somalia as a training ground for extremists and says
that radical Islamist leaders have made much of it a safe haven for high
level suspects, including the bombers of US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania a decade ago.

The violence in Somalia has killed more than 8 000 civilians and
uprooted 1 million since the beginning of 2007, when government forces
backed by Ethiopian tanks and warplanes drove a sharia courts group out
of the capital Mogadishu.

On Monday, UN-led talks in Djibouti produced a tentative peace agreement
between the government and some opposition figures. But the deal had
already been rejected by al-Shabaab commanders and other opposition
hardliners.

Many in Kismayu fear the pro-government clan militia that fled the town
on Friday might soon try to regroup to retake it.

"The capture of Kismayu by al-Shabaab may bring us a new disaster,"
Fatuma Mohamud, a local mother-of-four, told Reuters.

"We're afraid our town will become like Mogadishu, where explosions and
hit-and-run attacks are order of the day."