Addis Abeba, 24 April – As the Somali population of Mogadishu is facing decimation, Somali fighters have taken over the city of Kisimayo. Nonetheless, Minister Meles Zenawi said military operations to clean Somalia of Islamist extremists were going well. Despite reports of wounded dying in streets and shelled homes and of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced, camping in the open without shelter nor emergency supplies, Zenawi insisted that there are “no mass casualties of the type that the so-called human rights organisations have been reporting”.

“I would be very surprised if it were to take us more than a week or two to completely clear Mogadishu”, Zenawi added. By now, some 500 thousand residents of Mogadishu have fled, while armed fighters, drawn largely from the huge Hawiye tribe, have flocked into the capital, determined to drive the Ethiopian invaders out. Meanwhile, the destabilizing results of the Ethiopian [Woyanne] offensive in Somalia are spreading into Ethiopia itself: the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) claimed responsiblity for a raid carried out in an eastern Ethiopian oil field, where a group of about 200 guerrilla fighters massacred 65 Ethiopians and 9 Chinese in their sleep.

From the beginning of its Somalian adventure on 31st December last year, Woyanne had been warned that any prolongued military presence in Somalia would have sent a message of incitement to the Ogaden tribes in Ethiopia, who are closely linked to Somali tribes on the other side of the border. Meles Zenawi immediately blamed the Eritrean government of being behind the ONLF’s actions.

Source: Arab Monitor