Wednesday, December 13, 2006
By Hassan Yare
Fears the two will go to war ratcheted up as the rivals for control of the Horn of Africa country skirmished several times in the past week near Baidoa, the south-central trading town that is the only turf the government controls.
Just outside Buur Hakaba, the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) base closest to the front with Baidoa, witnesses reported both sides digging trenches and moving troops.
"I witnessed Ethiopian and government troops on high alert. After less than 2 km (1 mile) I saw the SICC on a defense line and moving toward Daynunay," Baidoa shopkeeper Isman Ibrahim Hassan told Reuters in Buur Hakaba, on his way to Mogadishu.
Daynunay is the forward government post on the road to Islamist-controlled Mogadishu, which passes Buur Hakaba. Both sides have been building up there for months.
"I saw a convoy of Ethiopian trucks including nine towing heavy artillery moving to the front," store owner Abdifaitah Ali Isak told Reuters by telephone from Baidoa.
Belligerent rhetoric has been at a fever pitch for months, and rose after the U.N. Security Council on December 7 approved a peacekeeping deployment to help the government, a move the SICC has threatened to answer with holy war.
On Tuesday Islamist defense chief Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad "Inda'ade" said Ethiopian troops had seven days to leave the country or face war.
Source: Reuters, Dec 13, 2006