Ethiopia launches air strikes as war in Somalia escalates

Published on Tuesday 26 December 2006 03:45

ETHIOPIAN warplanes attacked two Islamic-extremist held airfields in Somalia yesterday, witnesses said, in the most dramatic strikes yet of a war threatening to engulf the Horn of Africa.

The attacks - one on the capital Mogadishu - came just hours after neighbouring Ethiopia formally declared war, saying it was protecting its sovereignty against a movement run by terrorists.

Fighting raged for a seventh day near Daynunay, close to the government seat, Baidoa. Witnesses reported lorryloads of Ethiopian wounded being evacuated.

A MiG fighter struck Mogadishu's international airport with machine-gun fire soon after dawn, Abdirahim Adan, the airport's managing director, said. Three jets later attacked Somalia's biggest military airfield at Baledogle, 60 miles west of Mogadishu.

"We heard the sound of the jets and then they pounded," said Abdi Mudey, a soldier with the Council of Islamic Courts.

The week of intense fighting between Islamic militants and the Ethiopian- and Western- backed secular interim government has turned long-running hostilities into open war.

Analysts say Ethiopia seems to have halted the initial Islamic assault and saved the government from being overrun.

The Somalia Islamic Courts Council's (SICC) website hailed "mujahideen" troops who, it said, chanted passages from the Koran as they went into battle against militarily superior Ethiopian "crusaders". Ethiopia is a largely Christian nation.

Addis Ababa and Washington say the Islamic militants, who hold most of southern Somalia after seizing Mogadishu in June, are terrorists backed by Ethiopia's enemy, Eritrea, and by al-Qaeda.

Ethiopia has vowed to protect the government, which is virtually encircled by Islamic fighters in the town of Baidoa, halfway between Mogadishu and the Ethiopian border. A government spokesman said the administration approved of Ethiopian use of air power. "Anywhere terrorists use to bring in arms and ammunition deserves to be hit," said Abdirahman Dinari.

The government said it had closed all borders - a largely symbolic measure given that it has little power beyond Baidoa.

Ethiopia said it had attacked the capital's airport to stop "illegal flights" following the closure of Somalia's borders.

"It was also reported some of the extremists were waiting for an airlift out of Mogadishu," an Ethiopian spokesman said.

Aid agencies, struggling to get help to more than a million Somalis afflicted by conflict and weeks of floods in one of the world's poorest countries, said they had not been told about the closure of borders.

The Islamic militants accused Ethiopia of targeting civilians, and repeated a threat to attack its capital. "We shall strike Addis Ababa the way they hit Mogadishu," said the SICC's Abdirahman Ali Mudey. "These air strikes will not continue ... even if it means getting weapons from outside."

Ali Mohamed Gedi, the Somali prime minister, said 8,000 foreign fighters had poured into Somalia to back the SICC. He agreed with a US accusation that the movement's top ranks were controlled by al-Qaeda.

Both sides say they have killed hundreds of opponents in days of battles with mortars, rockets, machine-guns and tanks, but there has been no independent verification.

Residents said Ethiopian troops took control of Baladwayne town yesterday after a day of bombing to uproot the militants. To the south, locals in Baidoa saw Ethiopian military lorries ferrying wounded troops to the airport.

The militants claim broad popular support and say their main aim is to restore order to Somalia under sharia law after years of anarchy since the 1991 ousting of dictator Siad Barre.

Addis Ababa fears a hardline Muslim state on its doorstep and accuses the SICC of wanting to annex Ethiopia's ethnically Somali Ogaden region.

Experts fear the conflict could engulf the already volatile Horn of Africa. A recent UN report said ten countries have been illegally supplying arms and equipment to both sides of the conflict and using Somalia as a proxy battlefield.