27 July 2009
MOGADISHU, Somalia: With a show of force, Somali government troops on Sunday took full control of the strategic western town where the national security minister was killed last month. Hundreds of heavily armed government soldiers rolled into the town of Belet Weyne in 18 pickups with machine-guns just before dawn, resident Abshir Haji Damal said.
"The rebel forces surprisingly abandoned the area," he said.
Only one soldier was wounded in a brief fight with Islamist militants before Belet Weyne was retaken, said Muqtar Hussein Afrah, the chief commander of Somali forces in the central Hiran region.
Belet Weyne, the capital of Hiran, is close to the border with Ethiopia, some 300 kilometers north of Mogadishu. Since January, government forces have controlled the town's eastern part and Islamic insurgents the western part.
"We are now in control and troops are guarding the streets and the strategic locations of the entire town," Afrah told the Associated Press by phone.
On June 18, Somalia's national security minister and at least 24 other people were killed in a suicide attack in Belet Weyne that an extremist Islamic group, Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for. The US State Department considers Al-Shabab a terrorist oarganization that has links with Al-Qaeda, something the group denies.
Further north from Belet Weyne, villagers reported hundreds of Ethiopian troops move Saturday into the Somali village of Kalabeyrka, 20 kilometers from the border with Ethiopia. On Sunday, the troops patrolled the hills surrounding the village.
"They stopped me at a checkpoint they set up at the Kalabeyrka junction and asked me for my ID and where I was heading to, then ordered me to move on," bus driver Samow Haji told AP via phone.
Ethiopian officials say their troops regularly cross up to 15 kilometers into Somali on reconnaissance trips.
Ethiopia had troops in Somalia between December 2006 to January 2009 to back the fragile government against an Islamic insurgency. Ethiopia withdrew its troops in January under an intricate peace deal mediated by the United Nations that saw moderate Islamic leaders join the government.
Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991. AP
Copyright The Daily Star 2009.
