Somalia Insurgents Vow To Seize US Weapons

A spokesman for radical Islamic insurgents says his group will seize weapons the U.S. has supplied to Somalia's embattled government.

Sheik Hassan Ya'qub of al-Shabab says the weapons shipments will escalate violence in war-wracked country. He was speaking late Sunday in reaction to U.S. officials' statements last week that the Obama administration was supplying arms and providing military training to the shaky government.

The U.S. officials say the goal is to stem Islamic insurgent advances in the Horn of Africa region.

Islamic insurgents have been trying to topple the government for more than two years. Somalia has not had an effective central government for 18 years.

An administration review of U.S. policy toward Somalia found an urgent need to supply the Somali government with ammunition and weapons as it struggles to confront increasingly powerful Islamic militants.

Alarmed by terrorists' gains in Somalia, the administration decided it needed to do more to support Somalia's transitional federal government, officials said.

Officials said the U.S. would not conduct the training and that the U.S. military would not be in Somalia. The U.S. would provide logistical support for the training, and provide arms to the Somalis. The U.S. officials spoke about the emerging plan on condition of anonymity because the details have not yet been finalized.

But even with the administration's careful effort not to leave an American footprint in a country wracked by violent upheaval, the move amounts to a budding foreign complication for the U.S. as its own armed forces wage two distant wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The effort to bolster Somalia's tattered military and police forces faces heavy odds. Somalia has been in chaos for nearly 20 years, and the current U.N.-backed government there controls only a few blocks of the capital and comes under regular attack from increasingly powerful Islamic insurgents.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Thursday the administration was concerned about continuing unrest in Somalia. Kelly confirmed that the U.S. organized an arms shipment made to the Somali government earlier this month, but did not confirm the plans to train Somali forces in Djibouti. One official said the shipment was ammunition delivered to Mogadishu. The Washington Post first reported the arms shipment Thursday.