ACTUALITÉS (bis)
Dernière modification : le 02-Déc-2004 21:22 (GMT+1 / Bruxelles)

 

 

http://www.gouv-exil.org/

 

Le Général de Division (à titre temporaire)
M ALI ABDILLAHI IFTIN

Commandant le Mouvement Djiboutien
de Libération Nationale

 

 

02/12/04 - At least 28 killed in fighting in central Somalia
Pedro Ugarte - (AFP) - 12-02-2004, 14h56

MOGADISHU (AFP) - At least 28 people were killed and 74 wounded during heavy fighting in the central Somali village of Gelinsor, elders contacted by radio told AFP.

"Twenty-two bodies of those killed were brought early on Thursday morning to Galkayo from the neighbouring region of Galgudud, where the violence took place. The remaining six bodies were left behind in the battle zone," an elder who declined to be named told AFP from Galkayo.

Another elder confirmed the clashes, putting the death toll at more than 40.

There was no evidence the clashes between rival clan fighters were linked to Wednesday's announcent in Nairobi of the composition of a new Somali cabinet, an administration designed to fill a 13-year-old power vacuum in the anarchic Horn of Africa state.

Heavy weapons including tanks, mortar shells, and heavy and small machineguns, were used in the fighting, according to one elder on Thursday.

Local residents said the clashes were linked to the early November killing of five elders from the Suleyman subclan by gunmen from the rival Sa'ad subclan.

Since the 1991 fall of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, Somalia has lacked an effective central government and any form of national security forces, leaving the country's numerous clans and subclans to fight it out.

More than two years of talks in Kenya between warlords, elders, civil society leaders and academics have produced many of the building blocks of what is hoped will lead to Somalia's first effective government since Barre's ouster.

But all these institutions -- a parliament, president, prime minister and, as of Wednesday, a cabinet -- remain based in Nairobi, because Somalia's own capital, Mogadishu, is still consdered too dangerous.