Government forces, Ethiopian troops clash for second day with Islamic militia in southern Somalia

The Associated Press
Published: December 9, 2006
MOGADISHU, Somalia: Government forces backed by Ethiopian troops have clashed for a second day with Islamic militiamen near a village in southern Somalia, an Islamic courts official said Saturday.
The clash was a government counterattack aimed at regaining the village of Safarnoolees, which it lost to the Islamic militiamen Friday, said Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal, an Islamic courts official of the Bay region where the village is located.
Bilal said that fighting was continuing.
Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle said he was unable to confirm if any fighting had taken place.
On Friday, the rivals clashed in Safarnoolees, which served as a base for the transitional government forces. The Islamic militiamen claiming that they had routed the government forces while Jelle denied that had happened.
Eyewitnesses reported Saturday that they counted at least 15 people killed and 18 others wounded in that fighting.
"We could see the dead bodies, but we couldn't know who they were," said Sheikh Abdi Garre, who saw the bodies on the road to the government-controlled town of Baidoa, from where he spoke by phone.
Sheikh Ibrahim Shukri Abuu-zeynab, a spokesman for the Islamic courts that controls most of southern Somalia, said that the dead were government and Ethiopian soldiers.
"We defeated them and they were forced to leave their dead behind," Abuu-zeynab said.
Jelle denied that Ethiopians were fighting on the government side and said the dead were not government soldiers.
The transitional government and Ethiopia have consistently denied that Ethiopian forces are in the country, but their presence has been widely reported by witnesses and journalists. Ethiopia, has said that it has a few hundred military advisers in Somalia helping the government form a national army.
Somalia has not had an effective central government for 15 years, after warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other.
A transitional government was formed two years but it has been unable to assert its authority over the country and since June the Council of Islamic Courts has seized the capital, Mogadishu, and taken control of much of southern Somalia.
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Asssociated Press writer Salad Duhul in Mogadishu, Somalia contributed to this report.

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