Somali protesters rage in Mogadishu
MOGADISHU, Somalia – Hundreds of furious protesters crowded the streets Saturday, burning tires and smashing car windows while denouncing the presence of Ethiopian forces and shouting defiance at the interim Somali government’s call for disarming Mogadishu.
At least two people died in the violence, which exposed discontent in a city seeing its first legitimate governing force in years. Soldiers loyal to the U.N.-backed government and Ethiopia’s military drove out a radical Islamic group last week that had been in control six months.
“We are protesting against the disarmament and the Ethiopian presence in the country. We cannot accept disarmament under occupation,” Haeyle Abdulle Hussein, 23, told the Associated Press. “We will wage a holy war instead.”
It was not immediately clear what prompted the bloodshed or who was responsible. A 13-year-old boy was killed by gunfire and at least 17 people suffered bullet wounds, said Dr. Dahir Mohamud, a physician at Medina Hospital.
An Ethiopian soldier died when his hand grenade accidentally exploded, according to a nurse at the hospital who did not want her name published for fear of reprisals.
Many in predominantly Muslim Somalia resent having troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population. The countries have fought two brutal wars, the last in 1977.
The government announced earlier in the day that it was postponing plans to forcibly disarm the city – an operation that had been set to begin Friday.
Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said the protesters represented only a small portion of Mogadishu’s population and described them as remnants of the Council of Islamic Courts, which imposed strict Quranic law and threatened criminals with public floggings and executions.
Ethiopian soldiers, tanks and warplanes intervened in Somalia on Dec. 24, turning the war against an Islamic militia that had won control of much of the south and was threatening the interim Somali government in its only stronghold, the western city of Baidoa.
But, having provided the military might to rout Islamic fighters, Ethiopia’s government now wants to pull out in a few weeks because it is a poor nation and cannot afford to keep its troops here as peacekeepers.