Ethiopia may invade Somalia to stop Islamic militia
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Ethiopia may invade Somalia to stop Islamic militia
Associated Press
NAIROBI — Ethiopia is prepared to invade neighbouring Somalia to defend its UN-backed government against what appeared to be an imminent attack by Islamic militiamen, a government spokesman said Wednesday.
The militiamen, who hold most of southern Somalia, deployed hundreds of fighters outside the town where the largely powerless government is based and said they planned to seize it.
“We have the responsibility to defend the border and the Somali government. We will crush them,” Ethiopian Information Minister Berhan Hailu told The Associated Press.
Seizing the town of Baidoa would give the Islamic militia uncontested authority over most of Somalia.
Somali transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed is allied with Ethiopia, and has asked for its support. Ethiopia has intervened militarily in Somalia in the past, and hundreds of Ethiopian troops have been spotted along the countries' border in recent weeks.
The Somali Islamist militants are allied with Muslim separatists in the Oromo region of Ethiopia.
The government in Baidoa was on high alert and ready to defend itself from an attack, Deputy Information Minister Salad Ali Jelle told The Associated Press.
The Islamic militiamen seized the capital, Mogadishu, last month and have installed increasingly strict religious rule that sparked fears of a Taliban-style hard-line regime in this anarchic Horn of Africa nation. The United States has accused the militia of links to al-Qaeda that include sheltering suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Osama bin Laden has called Somalia a front in his global war against the United States and its allies.
“Nothing will stop us from going into Baidoa,” said Sheik Muqtar Robow, deputy defence chief for the Islamic group. He said more than 130 fighters who were loyal to President Abdullahi Yusuf had defected to the Islamists' side.
The interim government already was virtually powerless and barely able to control Baidoa, 240 kilometres northwest of the capital.
