Thursday, February 22, 2007
No one was wounded as the three mortar rounds fell, hitting the seaside airport's runway and a parking lot, witnesses said.
"People ran for cover immediately after the mortar hit the runway. I was standing near the tower during the attack," said one airport worker who declined to be named.
Gunmen also shot dead a district commissioner in Mogadishu late on Wednesday in what seemed to fit a continuing pattern of attacks against the government and its allies, including Ethiopian soldiers that are helping it hold the capital.
Mohyadin Hassan Haji, commissioner for the city's Yaqshid district "was killed last night around 8.30 p.m. near his home. Two gunmen assassinated him," said a government security source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The government, with Ethiopian airpower and armour, ran an Islamist movement out of Mogadishu in late December, ending its six-month rule of the capital and much of southern Somalia under strict sharia law.
The Islamists who survived scattered back to their clan areas and have vowed to fight an insurgency against the government and a planned 8,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force.
The Ugandan, Burundian and Nigerian troops who have so far pledged to deploy in Somalia will face a stiff challenge in a country that has resisted order and authority for the 16 years of anarchy since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre's ouster in 1991.
Mogadishu will be the toughest spot.
Dozens of people, mostly civilians, have been killed in near-daily mortar and rocket attacks and retaliation by the government, which says it has beefed up patrols and started a special unit to hunt down insurgents.
President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration has accused the Islamists of paying gunmen to attack its positions, but there are many people with weapons and anti-government grudges prowling in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Experts say the unrest has little chance of abating until the government reconciles with clans who feel excluded from the political process -- which has fuelled nearly two years of problems hampering Yusuf's administration.
Source: Reuters, Feb 22, 2007