56 fighters dead (aweys wounded)

[zingii]

Somali Islamists battle for town, 56 dead


By Abdi Sheikh
Friday, June 05, 2009


MOGADISHU, June 5 (Reuters) - Rival Islamist groups battled for a central Somali town on Friday, killing at least 56 fighters, while the number of new refugees from a month of fighting in the capital Mogadishu neared 100,000.

Somalia's two-and-a-half year insurgency -- the latest cycle of violence in 19 years of conflict in the Horn of Africa nation -- has killed 18,000 civilians and thousands more fighters.

It has also drawn foreign jihadists into Somalia, enabled piracy to flourish offshore, and unsettled the whole region, with East African neighbours on high security alert.

Rebels from the militant al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam groups first wrested control of Wabho town from pro-government moderate Islamists Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca in a day of heavy mortar and machine-gun exchanges, witnesses said.

"We have pounded mortars on the infidels and entered the town from all sides. Wabho is now under our control," Hisbul Islam spokesman Sheikh Muse Arale told Reuters.

Fighters spoke of dozens of dead, and the local Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said it had confirmed 56 fighters killed and dozens more injured.

Central towns have been changing hands regularly between militants and moderates in on-off fighting throughout the year.

Late in the day, Ahla Sunna claimed it had re-taken Wabho, and wounded hardline Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. Leaders on both sides spoke to Reuters by satellite phone, but other lines to the town were cut, so there was no independent verification.

U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 96,000 residents had been forced out of their homes in Mogadishu since a flare-up in rebel-government fighting in early May. That has added to the more than 1 million internal refugees in Somalia.

Aid agencies say Somalia now has one of the world's worst, and most neglected, humanitarian crises.

Three million Somalis need urgent food aid.

In its update on the flows from Mogadishu, UNHCR said about 35,000 of those displaced in the last month were still in the city, seeking shelter, because they had no means to escape.

Another 26,000 had reached makeshift camps in the Afgoye area, about 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Mogadishu.

"According to UNHCR's local partners in Somalia, some 2,000 people have indicated that they plan to cross the border into Kenya. More than a thousand said they are ready to risk their lives and make the perilous journey with smugglers across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen," the agency said.

"Some 600 people told our local partners they were heading towards Ethiopia."

Source: Reuters, June 05, 2009