Nomads in the cross hairs of a Somalia battleground

They're afraid to claim bodies of civilians for fear of being bombed
By NASTEEX DAHIR FARAH
Associated Press
WARSOW, SOMALIA — For years, this stretch of sand and brush has been little more than pasture for nomads' cattle and sheep.
It is now a battleground, as Somali troops backed by Ethiopian forces flush out Islamic militants and the U.S. hunts for al-Qaida.
Nomads say herdsmen have been caught in the crossfire. Eight dead men still were unburied eight days after an airstrike Jan. 8.
All were Muslim and normally would be buried immediately after their deaths, but the nomads in this remote southern Somali region say they are afraid to even approach the bodies.
"We fear that the planes that fly over the bodies all the time will bomb us if we try to bury them," said Haji Abdi Duhul, 67, who said he was only 250 yards away when the site was hit.
The sight of military aircraft has become routine for about a week, the nomads say.
Warsow has no permanent residents. Nomads use it as a grazing ground during the dry season, and the nearest town is 30 miles away.
An Associated Press reporter saw an Ethiopian helicopter, an Ethiopian MiG fighter jet and a small plane that was difficult to identify fly over.
The eight bodies lay in the open, two of them disfigured, apparently by the hyenas that roam the area. All had Somali features, and none of the men wore military fatigues.
Ugas Mohamed Shangalow, a clan elder, said the men were civilians.
The U.S. launched one airstrike Jan. 7, and several Ethiopian airstrikes have been reported since.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the U.S. Defense Department have said several times that no civilians were hit during airstrikes and that U.S. forces recovered evidence that the men killed in the U.S. strike were part of the radical wing of Somalia's Islamic movement.
Ethiopian forces helped the Somali government flush Islamic militants out of the capital and much of southern Somalia in recent weeks.
Remnants were believed holed up in the region south of the port city of Kismayo, hemmed in by Kenyan troops patrolling the border to the west and by the sea, where U.S. warships were patrolling, to the east.
The U.S. repeatedly has accused leaders of the Somali Islamic movement of harboring three top terror suspects wanted in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Nomads in Waraha, near Warsow, said that seven men there, returning from a wedding ceremony, were killed in a Jan. 8 airstrike.
An Associated Press reporter saw nine trucks with Somali license plates burned in Waraha. The nomads say that the Waraha strike came first, followed by one on Warsow.
Khalif Abdi, a nomad in Warsow, said that he saw white men in green military uniforms in the area a day after the airstrike, when he went to fetch water.
"Some were standing by a chopper that was on the site; others were scattered in the jungle. I feared they would harm me, so I sneaked out of the area," said Abdi.
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