An Islamist-held town in Somalia came under attack Monday from what local elders identified as a US Air Force AC-130 gunship, leaving at least four civilians dead.
Elder Abdullahi Sheikh Duale said the raid occurred in the early hours of Monday morning, and appeared to have focused on three particular targets in the Dhoble town.
“Four civilians were killed,” said Duale.
There was no immediate US confirmation of the operation.
Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, a spokesman for the Islamist movement which is leading an insurgency against the Somali government, confirmed the attack.
“The Americans bombed the town and hit civilians targets thinking that they were Islamist hideouts. They used an AC-130 plane,” Robow told AFP.
The AC-130 is a fearsome gunship bristling with side-mounted cannons that can saturate an area with devastating fire or strike targets with surgical precision.
The modified C-130 aircraft are used by air force special operations forces for close air support missions, strikes on select targets and to protect US forces in the field.
Carrying a crew of 13, it flies low and operates at night for concealment and surprise.
If confirmed, this would be at least the third time the US military has conducted operations inside Somalia since the start of 2007.
In June last year, a US Navy destroyer shelled suspected Al-Qaeda targets in mountainous and remote areas in northeastern Somalia where Islamist militants were believed to have bases.
Earlier the same year a US gunship bombed insurgent positions in southern Somalia, coming to the aid of the Somali government forces which had ousted the Islamists from most of the country’s southern and central regions.
US officials said the previous attacks were aimed at “high-value” Al-Qaeda militants — among them Comoran Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, blamed for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain, which oversees the Djibouti military base, referred calls to the US Department of Defense in Washington.
Since the Islamists were ousted from power in early 2007, they have been carrying out attacks against government officials, Ethiopian forces — who are backing the Somali government — and African Union peacekeepers.
Somalia has never really recovered since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre plunged the Horn of Africa nation into widespread clan fighting.
KISMAYU, Somalia, March 3 (Reuters) – Two U.S. missiles hit a house in southern Somalia on Monday, according to local officials, in an attack Washington said was directed at “known terrorists”.
It was the fourth U.S. strike in 14 months on Somalia, where Washington believes local Islamist insurgents are giving shelter to wanted al Qaeda figures.
“We launched a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists,” a senior U.S. official, who declined to be named, told Reuters in Washington.
Residents of Dobley, a remote Somali town 220 km (140 miles) from the southern port city of Kismayu on the Kenyan border, said they believed the missiles were targeting senior Islamist leaders meeting nearby.
Dobley district commissioner Ali Hussein Nur said six people were killed. A local politician, who had visited the scene and who asked not to be named, said only three were wounded.
The U.S. official said it was too early to know what damage had been inflicted, or whether there were any casualties. The official declined to give details on the type of weapon used.
The Somali politician said Sheikh Hassan Turki, a local militant cleric, and other leaders of a militant Islamist group from Mogadishu were meeting. The Islamists have been waging an insurgency against Somali government forces.
ASSESSING DAMAGE
“The town is very tense. People have started fleeing because they fear there might be more attacks,” he said.
A man in Kismayu, who said the house that was hit belonged to him, told Reuters in Kismayu his daughter was among the wounded and four of his cows had also been killed in the attack.
“We do not know whether the missiles were fired by the American AC-130 plane which is still flying over the city. All we know is they dropped from the sky,” Mohamed Nurie Salad said.
He said he was returning to Dobley to assess the damage, which he had been told about over the telephone.
On Jan. 8, 2007, a U.S. AC-130 gunship struck Islamists in southern Somalia in Washington’s first overt military action there since pulling out of a U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission in 1994 after the “Black Hawk Down” incident.
That attack, and another with the same kind of airplane shortly thereafter, struck Islamists fleeing from Ethiopian and Somali troops who cornered them in southern Somalia during a two-week war to rout the militant movement.
On June 21, a U.S. Navy ship fired missiles at Islamist fighters and foreign jihadists hiding in the mountains in the northern Puntland region.
The United States accuses Somali Islamist insurgents of harbouring al Qaeda fugitives responsible for planning and executing the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
In Mogadishu, several civilians were killed by soldiers patrolling the Somali capital’s main market on Monday.
“Four men were killed by stray bullets,” Ali Mohamed, head of the Bakara market traders’ committee, told Reuters. Witness Abdi Nur said he only saw two civilians dead.
In the southern town of Bur Hakaba, at least five people including the local police chief died in clashes between suspected Islamists and government forces, a resident said.
The Horn of Africa country has had no central government since a dictator was overthrown in 1991. An interim government formed in 2004 is struggling to assert its authority and is battling the Islamists in Mogadishu. (Additional reporting by Aweys Yusuf, Abdi Sheikh and Mohamed Abdi in Mogadishu, Writing Guled Mohamed in Nairobi; Editing by Giles Elgood and Elizabeth Piper)
(For in depth Reuters coverage of Africa please see: africa.reuters.com/ )
(Times Online) – A British teacher faces jail in Ethiopia after being convicted of defamation for her role in exposing paedophiles working in a children’s charity.
Jill Campbell and her husband Gary compiled a dossier of evidence that helped to convict a British sex offender who admitted having a sexual relationship with a child in his care. A second suspect committed suicide.
The Swiss charity Terre Des Hommes-Lausanne (TdH) admitted that abuse had taken place at its care facilities in the village of Jari, but denied the Campbells’ accusations that senior staff had covered up the scandal and had failed to inform the Ethiopian authorities. The charity successfully brought a defamation case against the couple.
Mrs Campbell, 45, will find out on Friday whether she will go to prison after a failed appeal. Her lawyers have told her that she will be found in contempt of court if she refuses to apologise and could be jailed for six months.
Yesterday friends said that she was distraught at having to tell her two adopted 10-year-old children that she might have to go to prison. Her husband has apologised to TdH so that one parent will be able to remain at home. In a statement published by the Ethiopian media last week, he apologised to the charity for alleging that it “knowingly removed their country director, David Christie (also known as David Allan) from Ethiopia in order to cover up a crime”.
The couple have lived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, for 14 years and are well known for their charity work. Friends have rallied to defend the Campbells and insist that without them paedeophile activity would not have been exposed. “Instead of TdH apologising to the victims, they are forcing Gary and Jill to apologise for blowing the whistle and stopping the chain of homosexual abusers victimising orphans in the care of this Swiss-based NGO,” said one.
Clare Rees, a teacher who works with Mrs Campbell at Sandford English Community School, said: “She’s seen as a saint. If you walk along the streets here you meet so many people she has helped. That’s why this whole thing is so unfair.”
Mrs Campbell became aware of the allegations of sexual abuse through a colleague at the school whose boyfriend worked at Jari. In December 1996 staff members saw a boy escaping from Christie’s bedroom window.
He was dismissed by the charity and left Ethiopia. He was subsequently arrested in 2001 as he travelled to Zambia. The Campbells had drawn up a dossier of evidence against him, which they circulated widely.
Christie, originally from Bournemouth, was eventually found guilty of abusing boys under 15 and of procuring children for his friends. In 2003 he was sentenced at a court in Addis Ababa to nine years in prison with hard labour.
One of his associates and a frequent visitor to Jari, Mark Lachance, committed suicide after posting a confession on the internet in 1999.
Colin Tucker, a spokesman for TdH, declined to discuss the charity’s motive in suing the whistle-blowers. “Read the judgment. That’s the best we can say,” he said. “They defamed us and we have successfully prosecuted them.”
Google is looking for the next generation of gadget developers in East Africa! Interested students should register for the competition and submit their ideas for what they think will make a great gadget. Each proposal should explain what the gadget does, who would use it, and why it will be successful, as well as adding some details about how the gadget will work. In March, we’ll review the registered gadget ideas and give feedback to the developer so that they can continue creating a fully functioning version of their gadget in time for the contest deadline in July. The overall winner plus some runners up will win prizes. If you have some technical skills, and are enrolled in a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD course in 2008 in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, or Burundi, we would love to hear your gadget ideas. Find more information about the competition as well as the submission form on our competition page… Continue reading >>
The U.S. government’s humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world’s poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both, officials at the agency said.
USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year’s end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.
Officials said they were reviewing all of the agency’s emergency programs — which target almost 40 countries and zones including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan’s Darfur region — to decide how and where the cuts will be made.
“We’re in the process now of going country by country and analyzing the commodity price increase on each country,” said Jeff Borns, director of USAID’s Food for Peace, the organization’s food aid arm. “Then we’re going to have to prioritize.”
The reductions, international relief agencies say, will seriously complicate already strained efforts to combat global hunger, particularly in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America. Poor countries in those regions are struggling to cope with record food price surges, which have made it difficult for aid groups to sustain their operations in some countries.
The cuts will likely have a direct impact on major USAID partners, including aid groups and the United Nations World Food Program, the largest international provider, which counts on U.S food aid for 40 percent of its distribution.
The U.N. program is confronting similar price pressures. It announced this month that it was facing a $505 million shortfall due to soaring food and fuel costs, and would cut distribution if it did not receive new funds. Meanwhile, need is increasing. Afghanistan, for instance, recently put in an emergency request for $77 million to cope with skyrocketing prices that have put key staples out of reach for more and more Afghans.
“Look at what’s happened to wheat prices alone — they shot up 25 percent in one day last week,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program. “This is really the first emergency we’ve faced without a drought, war, natural disaster. We will have to cut the amount of people being served or the amount of food being served if we do not get more funds.”
Groups that work with USAID, several of which have been informed of the shortfall over the past two weeks, are alarmed. Emergency aid is earmarked only for countries in desperate need as a result of natural disasters, civil strife or other humanitarian crises. Although the United States has proportionally provided less of the world’s food aid in recent years, it still provides about half the global total in efforts to relieve hunger among more than 800 million people. In 2007, USAID gave about 2.5 million tons of food, accounting for more than 50 percent of the emergency aid in a number of nations, including Ethiopia.
USAID officials would not speculate on which countries might be picked for cuts, though aid workers said it was unlikely that those with the greatest need — such as Sudan — would be hit hard. Most at risk appeared to be long-term emergency programs in such countries as Nepal, where unrest has quieted, as well as a number of African countries, such as Tanzania, that had relatively good harvests last year.
The Bush administration’s 2008 USAID budget request calls for $1.2 billion in food aid with a supplemental $350 million to cover assistance in Darfur and critical situations in southern Africa, Kenya and other hot spots.
USAID officials said the administration, facing a tight budget year, was not planning to request funds to cover the projected $200 million shortfall from the price increases. USAID purchases grains in the same domestic commodities market as the U.S. companies that serve up Wonder bread or Big Macs, meaning they pay the same high market rates. As a result, officials said, the program cuts are necessary. “At this point, this is the administration’s request,” Borns said yesterday.
Aid groups said they would press USAID and the Bush administration to pursue more funds from Congress to cover the shortfall. Several are concerned that the cuts come at a time when the Senate is considering a farm bill that would make it much harder for USAID to tap into non-emergency food in the event of a catastrophic event such as the 2004 Asian tsunami.
Frank Orzechowski, an adviser for Catholic Relief Services, said his organization has calculated that U.S. food aid would drop from 2.6 million tons last year to about 2.2 million this year. “That is going to be a pretty big hit for the people who can afford it the least,” he said.
“The biggest concern is that there are going to be more people being pushed into food insecurity in poor countries because they don’t have the purchasing power to cover higher costs, and we will be less rather than more prepared to cope with that. Higher commodity prices is not a situation that the U.S. is to blame for, but we are going to need to see it step up now and decide to make a greater contribution anyway.”
Although it may take several months before the cuts are felt, higher food prices already have begun to erode the non-emergency aid and development programs sponsored by USAID in partnership with CARE, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and others. In the case of one Asian nation, CARE said USAID had provided 10 percent less non-emergency food aid than expected, citing higher prices.
In Liberia, Catholic Relief Services funds its developmental programs — including health worker training and technical assistance to farmers — by selling wheat or rice provided by USAID at market prices. But, Catholic Relief was unable to find buyers for those grains in January because market prices have jumped so high that local buyers have switched to cheaper foods. The aid group is scrambling to find alternate sources before its funding runs out in April.
Agonafer Shiferaw has enjoyed living in San Francisco the past three decades. But 33 years ago, the Ethiopian native never expected to stay in the United States.
Agonafer Shiferaw
Shiferaw was here temporarily to earn an economics degree at San Francisco State University before returning home to work in public service.
Political unrest in his native country, however, drastically changed Shiferaw’s plans while he was still a Bay Area student. A Marxist junta overthrew the Ethiopian government in 1974, which made it unsafe for Shiferaw to return to his birthplace.
“I didn’t plan to stay in the states,” Shiferaw, 56, explained this week, before quickly adding, “But this is my home.”
Over the past 22 years, Shiferaw has made quite a name for himself in San Francisco as the owner of Rasselas Jazz Club, which offers live music and Ethiopian cuisine seven nights a week.
So much so, in fact, that Shiferaw will receive the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation’s Geraldine Johnson award that recognizes a business leader in re-establishing the Fillmorejazz district.
“Geraldine Johnson was our founder and one of the people who was part of the task force and had a vision for re-establishing the Fillmore back in the 70s,” said Regina Davis, the housing development agency’s executive directory. “Agonafer is a business leader on a historic street and his work goes beyond the everyday responsibility of running a business. He’s building community.”
Sheferaw will receive his award at the private-nonprofit agency’s Thursday gala that celebrates the Fillmore District’s re-emergence, Davis said, and honors the agency’s 20-year effort to help minorities and low-income families achieve financial stability through owning a home.
Founding the first Rasselas on California and Divisadero streets in 1986, Shiferaw opened another Rasselas at 1534 Fillmore Street in 1999 when, he explained, the city’s redevelopment agency invited him to participate in revitalizing the lower Fillmore area. The first club remained in business until four years ago.
Shiferaw’s priority now is to restore the lower Fillmore as the place in San Francisco to hear jazz on a nightly basis, through a collaborative effort with other clubs on or near Fillmore Street, such as Sheba Piano Lounge, Yoshi’s and 1300 on Fillmore.
“We still have a long way to go,” Shiferaw said. “We need to identify, brand this area, increase the level of restaurants and nightclubs, and change the perception people have of the lower Fillmore that anything lower than Geary is not safe,”
Shiferaw is confident his Western Addition neighborhood will once again become a musical destination point, not just regionally, but internationally.
“Fillmore Street is quite safe. All kinds of people come to Rasselas, young and old, black, while, Asian, Spanish. It’s very diverse, very electric, very comfortable,” he adds.
While Shiferaw and his peers have, by his own admission, plenty of work to do before his priority is realized, they are making great progress.
And for February, Shiferaw has his own special recognition for his neighborhood.
“For Black History Month in 2008, I’m declaring the lower Fillmore as the Republic of Jazz,” he said.
