Fighting Resumes Against Somali Militants

Somali government troops, backed by Ethiopian soldiers, resumed fighting against Islamic militia members in the southern part of the country Thursday, a government spokesman said.

The militant group was largely defeated last week — thanks entirely to help from Ethiopia — after nearly taking over all of Somalia and toppling its internationally recognized but nearly powerless transitional government.

The spokesman said forces were fighting about 600 militiamen in southern tip of Somalia.

Government forces have surrounded the Islamic militiamen "from every direction" in the southwestern district of Badade, near the Kenyan border, Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told The Associated Press. "The fighting is going on," Dinari said.
"We hope they will either surrender or be killed by our troops."

News of the fighting came directly on the heels of very hopeful messages from the U.S. government.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday the installation of a U.N.-backed government in Somalia represents a "historic opportunity" for Somalis to move beyond two decades of "warlordism, extreme violence and humanitarian suffering.

Rice also announced $11.5 million in food aid for Somalia, $1.5 million in non-food assistance and $3.5 million to help refugees.

Rice dispatched her top aide for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, to the Horn of Africa for discussions on promoting a peacekeeping force for Somalia and to urge a political dialogue leading to national reconciliation.

Frazer, speaking to journalists Thursday, said she hopes African peacekeepers will be in Somalia by the end of January.

She cited Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's promise to President Bush in a recent phone call that he could supply between 1,000 and 2,000 troops to protect Somalia's transitional government and train its troops.

The hopeful news came even as Somalia's interior minister warned that remnants of the recently-defeated rebel Islamic movement still pose a threat in the capital city, days after his government's soldiers and Ethiopian troops chased most of the militiamen from Mogadishu.

"There are 3,500 Islamists hiding in Mogadishu and the surrounding areas and they are likely to destabilize the security of the city," Interior Minister Hussein Aideed told journalists at a news conference. Aideed did not explain the source of his information or what prompted his comments after Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said on Tuesday that major fighting had ended and he expected only minor violence ahead.

At a separate news conference Thursday, Gedi played down the threat and disputed Aideed's figure of Islamists hiding in the capital but did not offer his own estimate.

The Islamic movement has declared it would keep fighting, raising the specter of an Iraq-style guerrilla war.

Over the past 15 days, troops of Somalia's transitional government and Ethiopian forces routed the Islamic movement, which had controlled most of southern Somalia.

Meanwhile, Kenya said Thursday it has closed its border with Somalia in an apparent effort to keep militants and refugees from entering the country.

"The Kenyan border is officially closed," Foreign Affairs Minister Raphael Tuju told The Associated Press, but he did not say when the decision was made or how the border would remain closed.

Kenya sent extra troops to its northern frontier with Somalia on Wednesday.

The U.N.'s humanitarian agency said Wednesday that about 4,000 Somali refugees were reported to be near the Somali border town of Dhobley, unable to cross into Kenya.

With the Islamic movement's fighters on the run, concern has grown about extremists believed to be among them. Three al Qaeda suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa are believed to be leaders of the Somali Islamic movement. Islamic movement leaders deny having any links to al Qaeda.

In Washington on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. Navy vessels were deployed off the Somali coast of Somalia looking for al Qaeda and allied militants trying to escape.

Aideed said that there are about 12,000 to 15,000 Ethiopian troops in Somalia, and when peacekeepers arrive in the country, the Ethiopians will leave. Ethiopia has put the number much lower, at around 4,000, and said it would pull out within weeks. Many Somalis fear that when the Ethiopians leave, there will be a power vacuum that could lead to a return to the anarchy and warlord rule of the past.

A proposed African peacekeeping force, which European countries endorsed Wednesday, has not yet been organized, though diplomatic efforts are under way to get one on the ground.

Museveni was expected in Ethiopia Thursday to hold talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi about Uganda's pledge to contribute 1,000 troops to a peacekeeping force for Somalia, Ethiopian government spokesman Zemedkun Teckle told The Associated Press. Meles has pressed the international community to send in peacekeepers quickly, saying his forces cannot play that role and cannot afford to stay long.

Zemedkun added that Meles on Thursday sent ministers to Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya and Sudan to discuss Somalia.

The ministers, "are lobbying for support, obviously, and they are delivering a message from the prime minister and on the basis of that they will have some sort of discussion," Zemedkun said.

The Islamic movement had filled a vacuum in a country that has been without effective central government since clan-based warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The warlords then turned the country into a chaotic patchwork of armed, clan fiefdoms.

The transitional government was formed in 2004, after two years of talks in neighboring Kenya. It has international recognition, but little military strength, and was riven by clan politics. Two weeks ago it controlled only one town, central Baidoa, while the Islamic movement held the capital and much of southern Somalia.

Ethiopia's intervention dramatically changed the government's fortunes.