Radical Islamist Shebab members ride in the back of a pick up truck in Mogadishu, in September
MOGADISHU — At least eight people were killed and 14 wounded in southern Somalia on Sunday during clashes between formerly allied rival Somali Islamist groups, witnesses said.
Fighting began with an attack by the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab on Jana Abdala, a Hezb al-Islam-controlled village west of southern Somalia’s main port of Kismayo, which was itself the scene of major fighting last week.
“Five Shebab and three Hezb al-Islam fighters were killed in fighting according to what we know for now,” a Hezb al-Islam fighter said, requesting anonymity.
“The Shebab launched a major and well-organised offensive, they were repelled but they didn’t go back to Kismayo and they could resume the offensive early,” on Monday, said inhabitant Mohammed Abdi.
Kismayo, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) south of Mogadishu, was wrested from government forces in August and had been an Islamist bastion ever since but relations between the two groups soured in recent weeks.
The two factions had agreed to share power in Kismayo, with each governing for six months alternatively, but clan politics seeped in and the rotation failed when the Shebab refused to relinquish the administration.
For almost five months, the two armed factions had led a bruising campaign to oust government fighters from key towns and topple President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
The Shebab are a hardline organisation that recently pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda supremo Osama bin Laden and spearheaded the resistance against Ethiopia’s two-year occupation that ended in January.
Hezb al-Islam is a more political organisation headed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a former ally of Sharif’s in the Islamic Courts Union.
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AFP
