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TFG troops entirely vacate a strategic southwestern neighborhood.
Somalia’s transitional government forces have totally pulled out from Bur-Hakaba
district where contradictory reports are coming out about the departure of
the soldiers from Bor-Hakaba those departed towards Baidoa town the
temporary base of the transitional government of Somalia.
soldiers in the locale were a moment ago beheaded by Al-Shabab
fighters also the spokesman of the groups has sworn that they would execute
the government soldier they capture.
Borhakaba is 60km from Baidoa town the provincial capital of Bay region.
Also some residents told Mareeg that there are armed Alshabab fighters
in the vicinity of locale those previously attacked a number of times the
TFG’s abandoned force’s bases.
Islamist insurgents cut off the heads of three Somali soldiers south of
the capital on Thursday and the U.N. special envoy said he would try to set
up peace talks between the opposition and government.
It was the first case of beheadings since the government and its
Ethiopian military allies ousted the Islamists from power in late 2006,
sparking a bloody insurgency characterized by roadside bombs and
hit-and-run attacks.
"This morning the Mujahideen attacked the so-called government troops
guarding the roads for the Ethiopian forces. We killed three of them," said
Muktar Ali Robow, a senior commander of the Islamists' Shabab youth wing.
"We did what we promised to them. People traveling in that road can be
asked how we killed them," he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed
location.
Witnesses in the area said they saw three headless corpses near Lego
town, 130 km (81 miles) south of Mogadishu.
"We were terrified because we have never seen a human slaughtered like
an animal," truck driver Hassan Mohamed Amin told Reuters.
At least 7,000 people have died, and hundreds of thousands been
displaced in the 15-month insurgency, creating what aid workers call one of
the world's worst yet most ignored humanitarian crises.
In a separate attack, gunmen killed a police official and two body
guards, also wounding two local employees of Medecins Sans Frontieres-Spain,
some 30 km (19 miles) north of Mogadishu.
"We do not know whether the attackers were insurgents or any other.
Investigations are underway and we will determine whoever was responsible
for the killings," Mohamed Weli Ugas, mayor of nearby Balad, told Reuters
by telephone.
The government appealed again this week for its foes to join talks led
by the United Nations.
"I have no doubt that all Somalis and their concerned friends,
governments and organisations will support this move," said U.N. envoy to
Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah.
"As requested by the Somali parties, I will assume the leadership role
and will contact all sides to propose the timing and modalities for future
discussions," he added in a statement issued from his office in Nairobi.
Analysts believe, however, it is unlikely Islamist-led insurgents, many
of whom view their attacks on the Western-backed government as a jihad or
holy war, could be persuaded to join.
And an Eritrean-based alliance of Somali opposition groups
-- Made up of former parliamentarians, Islamists and some members of the
foreign diaspora -- is insisting Ethiopian troops withdraw before talks.
Ethiopia sent thousands of soldiers into Somalia in late 2006 to help
the government, virtually encircled in the town of Baidoa, topple Somalia's
Islamic Courts Council which had ruled most of the south from Mogadishu
since the middle of that year.
The scattered Islamist fighters regrouped and have waged an Iraq-style
insurgency.
Ould-Abdallah, who works from Nairobi due to insecurity in Mogadishu,
said civil society organisations and Somalis in the diaspora were eager to
join reconciliation discussions. |