SOMALIA: Hundreds of Somalian government troops take to the streets to show they are in control and to prevent more looting

Record ID: 741385

  • Title: SOMALIA: Hundreds of Somalian government troops take to the streets to show they are in control and to prevent more looting
  • Date: 29th April 2007
  • Summary: MORE OF SOMALIAN GOVERNMENT TROOPS ON THE STREETS PATROLLING (SOUNDBITE) (Somali) MOGADISHU RESIDENT ABDI ADEN KHERRE SAYING: "I am ready and willing to get my family back to Mogadishu because they have been homeless and we appreciate the fact that the government is allowing us back." MORE OF SOMALIAN GOVERNMENT TROOPS ON THE STREETS
  • Embargoed: 14th May 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Somalia
  • Country: Somalia
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA6T2MCGC9XGV18SXACEXZ3PCUW
  • Story Text: Somalian government sent troops to the streets to show they are in control of the city and that they had taken over from the insurgents. Allied Somali-Ethiopian troops patrolled Mogadishu on Saturday (April 28), hunting for weapons after claiming significant gains in battles with insurgents that have killed at least 1,300 people since February.
    Interim government forces were deployed in the city's Bakara Market, a former stronghold of rebels frustrating the administration's efforts to restore central rule in the Horn of Africa nation for the first time in 16 years.
    "I would like to tell you that am very excited that the major fighting that was taking place in the capital Mogadishu has been stopped and calm has been restored since yesterday," said Somalia President Abdullahi Ahmed Yusuf at a press conference he called to say his government was in control.
    Some homes and commercial properties, including a Coca Cola plant, were looted on Friday (April 27) as relative calm returned after nine-days of Mogadishu's heaviest fighting for years.
    Some residents are happy that calm has returned and are willing to take their families back to the city with the hope that the government will protect them.
    Government troops were posted at strategic junctions in the city, searching cars and passengers for arms.
    The African Union (AU) has called for more peacekeepers to be sent urgently to Mogadishu. Some 1,500 Ugandan soldiers already there have been pinned down by the clashes, restricted to guarding the presidential palace and air and sea ports.
    The United Nations has accused both sides in the conflict of breaking humanitarian law by indiscriminately firing on civilian areas, and says the rate of displacement in Somalia over the past three months has been worse than Iraq in the same period.
    Some 350,000 people have fled the city since February, more than a third of its one million population. Thousands have sought shelter in surrounding town and villages, sleeping under trees or out in the open, vulnerable to disease and robbers.
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