MOGADISHU (AFP) — Embattled Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on Thursday vowed to fight insurgents to the bitter end as fresh clashes erupted in the south of the capital.
“We will fight to death until peace is assured,” Sharif told reporters as his forces and hardline Islamist militants exchanged mortar shells and heavy fire in parts of the capital.
Sharif spoke after talks with clerics from a moderate but influential Sufi religious sect who pledged to take up arms to shore up his shaky administration.
“From now on we are ready to stand by the government of Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. We will defend it and we will fight the rebels,” Sheikh Ali Dhere said after meeting the president.
The Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa sect is a national Sufi movement which had not been known to engage in armed action in recent years.
But some of its members in a region near the border with Ethiopia in January took up arms against the Shebab, whose ideology is closer to the more rigorous Wahhabi brand of Islam.
Fighting on Thursday spread to several neighborhoods in southern Mogadishu after government forces using anti-aircraft weapons and mortar shells targeted insurgents’ positions.
“Our forces are advancing onto the rebel controlled positions in Hodon district, two of our soldiers were injured so far,” said Abukar Adan, a Somali government security officer.
Witness Farah Mohamed also reported heavy clashes and seeing several wounded civilians.
“I saw seven civilians who were injured near Albaraka, mortar shells hit several locations in the neighborhood,” he told AFP.
“The government forces in armed vehicles attacked the rebel positions near Tarbunka and Kpp, there was heavy exchange of mortars and anti-aircraft weapons,” added Abdulahi Madobe, a local resident.
Backed by African peacekeepers securing the presidential palace, as well as the sea port and the airport, Somali government forces launched a counter-offensive almost two weeks ago and regained some ground.
“It is our responsibility as a government to fulfill our duties and commitments, we will not keep our hands folded and we will defend our sovereignty,” said president Sharif as loyalist forces near his palace fired heavy artillery shells targeting rebel positions.
Battles over so-called control of districts have generally boiled down to skirmishes around an area’s main police station, with neither side proving it had the ability to conquer and hold more than a handful of strongholds.
More than 200 people have been killed and 91,000 uprooted from their homes in the month-old battles initially launched by extremists advocating the imposition of strict Sharia law in the Horn of African nation.
A lawless country of around 10 million, Somalia has had no effective central authority since former president Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, setting off a bloody cycle of violence.
