Thursday, August 21, 2008
By Sahra Abdi Ahmed
President Abdullahi Yusuf's interim administration signed the peace agreement on Monday at U.N.-led talks in Djibouti.
The deal, which was first initialled in June, calls for the rapid deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to halt the bloodshed.
"The AU reiterates its determination to support the TFG (Transitional Federal Government) and other Somali stakeholders as they strive to bring an end to the violence that has plagued Somalia for so many years", the AU said in a statement.
It said it would work closely with the United Nations to ensure the early deployment of U.N. troops but gave no details.
The deal has been rejected by opposition hardliners, and the U.N. Security Council has been reluctant to commit U.N. forces.
Fighting pitting Islamist rebels against government troops and their Ethiopian military allies has killed more than 8,000 civilians and uprooted 1 million since the start of last year.
Most of the turmoil has plagued the bombed-out capital Mogadishu, where at least six people died on Thursday in mortar duels between government forces and the insurgents.
Fierce gun battles also rocked the normally calmer southern port of Kismayu. Residents there said more than 20 people, mostly rebels, had died in clashes that started on Wednesday.
"Forty wounded people have reached us now and the fighting between the two groups is still going on," Ali Hassan, a doctor at Kismayu general hospital, told Reuters.
"We hear there are many dead and injured people in the town, but movement is restricted by the shooting."
A spokesman for the al Shabaab insurgent group, which the United States says is a terrorist organisation with close ties to al Qaeda, said his forces were behind the attack in Kismayu.
He gave no other details. (Additional reporting by Abdi Sheikh,
Ibrahim Mohamed and Abdi Mohamed in Mogadishu and Tsegaye Tadesse in
Addis Ababa; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Michael Winfrey)
SOURCE: Reuters, August 21, 2008