Somali Islamists stage anti-U.S., Ethiopia protest
Source: Reuters
By Sahal Abdulle MOGADISHU, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Somalia's Islamists said on Tuesday their forces had exchanged artillery fire with troops from neighbouring Ethiopia in the latest sign of tension in the violent Horn of Africa state. There was no immediate confirmation of the clash in Bandiradley, 700 km (435 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu, where thousands of Somalis demonstrated against what they called meddling in their country by Ethiopia and the United States. "The Ethiopians have fired 12 artillery pieces on Bandiradley," senior Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed told a crowd of 10,000 protesters gathered in a city square. The demonstration was called by the newly powerful Islamists to denounce the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia supporting their rivals in the weak but Western-backed interim government. Protesters also condemned the United States for pushing for a waiver to a 1992 arms embargo on Somalia that would let regional peacekeepers enter the country legally with their weapons. The Islamists are bitterly opposed to such a force. Speaker after speaker asked the crowd whether they were ready to be martyred in the fight against Somalia's enemies. Each time, they roared back: "Yes!" Women in veils and robes struck poses with assault rifles, and Islamist troops kept watch from pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weaponry as the demonstrators chanted "Victory or death!" Islamist defence chief Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad "Inda'ade" told the crowd that if the United Nations Security Council lifted the embargo to allow in foreign peacekeepers, they would also invite foreign fighters from Islamic states. EMBARGO THREAT "If the U.N. lifts the arms embargo and authorises foreign troops to come here we will let all Muslims come here," he said. He accused the United States of campaigning for more Ethiopian troops to be allowed into Somalia, and issued a warning to east African countries considering sending peacekeeping troops. "Anybody who gives a hand to (Ethiopian Premier Meles) Zenawi will be a target, no matter where they are," he said. Ethiopia denies sending troops into Somalia, although it says it has several hundred military trainers there. Tuesday's rally came amid increasingly belligerent rhetoric and heightened fears that a standoff between the government and Islamists could spiral into a wider regional war, sucking in neighbouring countries. Washington accuses the Islamists, who seized Mogadishu in June, of harbouring al Qaeda operatives. The U.S.-backed Security Council resolution would approve deployment of a joint peacekeeping force put together by the African Union and the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development. But the measure has kicked off a lively debate over whether it would help stabilise Somalia, as Washington and London hope, or trigger wider fighting, as European Union experts and a major international think-tank have suggested.
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