     Mahmood | Tuesday, September 12, 2000 - 04:39 am
See by yourself
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2000-09-11
SOMALIA: SOMALI CAPITAL HIT BY RENEWED VIOLENCE.
MOGADISHU, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Growing violence in the Somali capital is damping down optimism that followed last month's appointment of the country's first president in almost a decade.
Bus owners on Monday pulled their vehicles off the roads in Mogadishu to protest the rising violence after armed militia wrecked several vehicles on Sunday.
Residents said a wave of looting and banditry has hit the capital in the past few days.
Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, deputy prime minister and interior minister in the government of the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, was elected president by Somalia's new parliament last month and was broadly welcomed both at home and abroad.
But members of clan-based militia factions - who divided Somalia and have ruled by the gun since 1991 - have gone on the rampage in the past four days, looting dozens of shops and houses in the southwestern suburb of Medina, witnesses said.
Abdiqassim Salad was elected president in late August at the culmination of a three-month peace process sponsored by neighbouring Djibouti. He has vowed to end the lawlessness that has plagued the Horn of Africa country over the past nine years.
Following his election, Abdiqassim Salad was welcomed home by more than 100,000 cheering Mogadishu residents, but some of the city's most prominent warlords have opposed his appointment.
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Knowing that their time as lords is finished, they have gone into sacking, stealing, looting, just like in those days in 1991 when Af Ween's army, knowing that their time was finished looted Mogadiscio.
May Allah make them burn in the fire of Juhanam. |
