Reuters/Mogadishu

 

 

Kenyan police officers inspect bullets recovered yesterday from the Panama-flagged MV Izumi at the Kenyan port city of Mombassa

Somali rebels have launched a recruiting drive to counter a government offensive aimed at breaking the back of the insurgents, a rebel commander said yesterday, as fighting continued a stone’s throw from the border with Kenya.

Sustained clashes over the last week have centred on the capital and Somalia’s southern border with Kenya. Government troops and African Union peacekeepers say they have inflicted heavy losses on the Shebaab militants in Mogadishu.

But Shebaab claim to have hit back, killing at least seven Burundian soldiers from the AMISOM peacekeeping force.

“We urge Somalis, in particular military officers from former governments, to take up weapons and support al Shebaab’s counter-attack,” Sheikh Muktar Robow Mansoor, a top al Shebaab militant, told a crowd in the rebel-held Gedo region.

In the south, Ethiopian troops lined the border from the Kenyan town of Mandera east to the Ethiopian frontier town of Dollow, residents and a Somali military officer said.

Ethiopia invaded Somalia to support the interim government with tacit US support at the end of 2006 and officially withdrew its military from the country only in early 2009.

Since then Ethiopia and neighbouring Kenya, east Africa’s largest economy, have helped to train Somali government forces.

Over the weekend, Shebaab repeated threats to strike Kenya for its training activities and for allowing Ethiopian troops to operate from its towns.

“The Ethiopian troops are heavily armed and deployed along the border between Mandera and Dollow, giving us ammunition,” said the Somali officer on condition of anonymity.

“Our troops and the (government-allied) Ahlu Sunna fighters are in the frontline. The fighting will continue. We want sustained fighting to weaken their power,” he said.

Kenyan military helicopters swooped along the border and over the Somali town of Balad Hawa where Somali troops have been locked in gun-battles and artillery fire with al Shebaab.

Shebaab militant Robow dismissed AMISOM reports that the government had seized several strategic insurgent bases in the past few days, saying the insurgents had in fact repelled the attacks.

President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed acknowledged the offensive had not gone according to plan. “Now we are preparing a tougher offensive to oust Shebaab from the city. The shortest way to impair Shebaab is to exert a powerful military action on them,” he said on Monday night.

Some Horn of Africa experts say a coherent political strategy must run in tandem with any military effort if there is to be long-lasting stability.

The mandates of both the interim government and parliament end in August but there is no clear plan yet for what will follow with elections impossible in the lawless nation.

“There must be a political strategy in advance of a military strategy and that does not appear to be clear,” said Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group.

People living along the desert frontier said Kenyan troops had deployed along the porous border near the town of Mandera, denying access to scores of Somalis fleeing the clashes.

“We feel secure now. Our army is serious, they are camping right at the border and are in charge,” said a school teacher from the Kenyan town of Mandera who gave his name as Ibrahim.