NationStates Jolt Archive

Violence engulfs Somali capital
January 10, 2007

MOGADISHU, Somalia: Mogadishu exploded in violence Wednesday morning after insurgents attacked a government barracks during the night and soldiers responded by sealing off large swaths of the city and searching house to house for weapons.

The raids immediately sparked resistance, and squads of Ethiopian soldiers and troops loyal to the transitional government poured into the streets, where they battled outraged residents and a handful of masked insurgents.

Sources: YahooNEWS/the International Herald/OcceanNEWS©2004 - 2007

my2cents: Enraged residents? Insurgents? terrorists? these are all interchangeable terms.. we shall use them depending on the situation..

Lets say we Air-strike a house in Soamlia.. and kill 15.. we shall call them all "terrorists"..
and issue the following statement to CNN/AP "we just killed 15 terrorists.. blah blah blah.. Ethiopian intelligence.. blah blah blah.. islamists.. blah blah bla Alquaeda.. blahblah blah.."

I wonder if they'll ever learn what happens when you start marching through someone else's home with automatic weapons.

Well this was astonishingly surprising...

"In a town full of armed people in various factions, a gun battle ensues... shocker, eh?"

Doctors at Medina hospital said Wednesday afternoon that 15 people were admitted for gunshot wounds in 24 hours, including 3 government soldiers. The violence from the past week has filled the hospital's 65 beds, leaving bleeding men and women curled up on the floor and under acacia trees in the courtyard.

"This is not something that is going to stop," said Dahir Mohammed, head of medical department. "Until the Ethiopians leave, people will be determined to kill them."
The Islamist leaders, meanwhile, have fled to a jungle in southern Somalia along the Kenyan border where they are being hunted down by Ethiopian troops, with the help of American forces.


Thousands of Ethiopian troops are essentially occupying Somalia and many Somalis are increasingly beginning to resent it.

Barwaqho Mohammed Osman, a mother of two, stood in a central Mogadishu street Wednesday with plastic bags of groceries in her hands and no way to get home. Ethiopian soldiers told her that her neighborhood had been sealed off because of the raids.

When Osman tried to plead with them, witnesses said, the soldiers clicked the safeties off their guns and told her to go.

--THI--

Occupation forces, you mean the Somali government?

The Ethiopians are there as peacekeepers until African Union troops are put into the country instead... they're not an occupying force in the same respect as the US is in Iraq.

Occupation forces, you mean the Somali government?No.

I mean what i say.. O-C-C-U-P-A-T-I-O-N forces.

for the latest information on the Occupation forces.. just google the news, keywords: occupation+somalia
http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&tab=wn&q=occupation%20somalia