Mujega affa alaba!!
Somalia militants plan to train students
By SALAD DUHUL, Associated Press Writer Tue Sep 19, 4:06 PM ET
MOGADISHU, Somalia - The Islamic militia that controls much of southern Somalia said Tuesday it will train students for holy war against foreign peacekeepers, an ominous development amid fears that a Taliban-style regime is emerging in the country.
Last month, seven African countries, known as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, endorsed a plan to send 3,500 Ugandan and Sudanese troops to Somalia to support the weak government based in Baidoa, a town 150 miles from the capital.
The Islamic militia has pledged to battle the peacekeeping force if it is deployed.
"We will fight a jihad (holy war) against
them and we will train our students in military tactics," said Fuad Mohammed Kalaf, an education official for the Islamic militia.
The militia leader, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, added: "They are not the owners of Somalia. Somalia belongs to Somalis."
The African force was initially expected to deploy to Somalia next month, but that is unlikely. The deal faces two major obstacles: The U.N. must lift an arms embargo on Somalia that has been in place for more than 10 years to allow peacekeepers to enter the country, and the African Union must release funds to back the mission, which is expected to cost $34 million a month.
Kalaf said the training camps would be set up soon, but officials were still working out the details. He defended the plan to set them up in high schools.
"There is nothing wrong with our plan to train students," he said. "There are a lot of countries in the world that carry out such exercises."
Meanwhile, the government tightened security around its headquarters in Baidoa the only town it controls a day after a suicide car bomber tried to kill President Abdullahi Yusuf.
The president escaped unharmed, but 11 people were killed in the explosion and a subsequent gunbattle, including Yusuf's younger brother.
The attack followed the slaying of an Italian nun at a hospital where she worked in Mogadishu on Sunday.
Foreign Minister Ismail Mohamed Hurre said the government believed the car bomb and nun's slaying bore "the hallmarks of al-Qaida." The terror organization's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called Somalia a battleground in his war on the West.
The Islamic
militia has been accused by the U.S. of having ties with al-Qaida, but the group has denied involvement in the car bombing and shooting of the nun.
The government called on outside help Tuesday to find those responsible for the car bombing the first suicide attack in Somalia.
"We call on the international community the U.S., the EU, Japan and any other country to assist us in the investigation of this blast, which is a new phenomenon in Somalia," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy.
The government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help in hopes of restoring order after years of lawlessness. But the Islamic movement seized the capital, Mogadishu, after fierce battles with secular warlords in June and now controls much of the country's
south.
The group's strict and often severe interpretation of Islam raises memories of Afghanistan's Taliban, which was ousted by a U.S.-led campaign for harboring bin Laden and al-Qaida fighters.
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More than 3,400 Somali have fled the growing tensions and gone to neighboring Kenya in the past week. Since the beginning of the year, more than 26,300 Somalis have sought refuge in Kenya, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees said.
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Associated Press writers Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu and Malkhadir Muhumed and Anthony Mitchell in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.
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