Ethiopia's prime minister said Islamic fighters were in a
tactical retreat Tuesday after suffering massive casualties as
government and Ethiopian troops advanced for control of
Somalia.
"I hear reports of close to 3,000 injured in Mogadishu's
hospitals ... and well over 1,000 might have died. Some of them are
Somalis, but a very significant proportion of them are not
Somalis," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told reporters in the
Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. He cited internal military
reports.
His reference to non-Somalis follows his allegation that the
Islamists are recruiting foreign Muslim fighters.
Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts has been under heavy fire
since Sunday, when Ethiopia sent fighter jets across the border to
help Somalia's internationally backed government push out the
Islamists. Ethiopia bombed the country's two main airports and
helped government forces capture several villages.
The Somali Government Tuesday called on the Islamists to
surrender and promised them amnesty if they lay down their weapons
and stop opposing the government, spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said
from Baidoa, the seat of the government.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his forces have
completed about half their mission. "As soon as we have
accomplished our mission and about half of our mission is done, and
the rest shouldn't take long we'll be out," Meles said.
Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a top leader of the Islamic group,
said he asked his troops to withdraw from some areas. "The war is
entering a new phase," he said. "We will fight Ethiopia for a long,
long time and we expect the war to go everyplace."
Ahmed declined to explain his comments in greater detail, but
some Islamic leaders have threatened a guerrilla war to include
suicide bombings in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.
Skirmishes were continuing despite the retreat; a witness in Bur
Haqaba said he heard explosions nearby after two Ethiopian jets
flew overhead.
"I saw two helicopters, I heard the sounds of bombs at Lego
village," said Mohamed Abdulle Siidi by telephone. The village is
about 15 kilometers from Lego. The account could not be immediately
confirmed.
Ismael Mohamoud Hurreh, a member of Somalia's transitional
national government, said Tuesday that "the story of the Islamic
courts is coming to an end" and that the government will eventually
take the capital, Mogadishu. He declined to give a timetable,
however.
(China Daily December 27, 2006)
