October 22, 2006
As both sides girded for battles near the weak government's temporary seat of Baidoa, fighting rocked the town of Buale for about two hours with Islamists driving local militiamen out, witnesses said.
A day after government forces, allegedly backed by Ethiopian troops, took Burhakaba, just southeast of Baidoa, fighting erupted in Buale, north of the key port of Kismayo that the Islamists seized last month, they told reporters.
Witnesses and Islamist commanders in Buale, about 80km from Kismayo, said Muslim gunmen had driven from the town members of the Juba Valley Alliance (JVA) who fled north after gun battles.
"We have taken all of their armed vehicles after fierce clashes with the JVA in Buale," said Ibrahim Hassan Shukri, a commander with the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia. "One of our Mujahedeen was killed in the fighting."
"We took eight battlewagons from the JVA," said another Islamist commander Sheikh Yakubu Ali, referring to machine-gun mounted pick-ups also called "technicals". "The area is under the control of the Islamic courts."
JVA commander Deeq Abbi said his fighters had withdrawn after the fighting in Buale in which four of his men were killed.
"We were attacked by the Islamic courts militia," he told reporters by satellite phone. "They took two vehicles from us and killed four of our fighters. We have retreated from Buale."
The JVA is led by the defence minister in Somalia's transitional government, which is facing a serious challenge from the Islamists, who seized Mogadishu in June from warlords and now control most of southern and central Somalia.
It held Kismayo, about 500km south of Mogadishu, until September 24 when its forces fled ahead of a feared push on the town by advancing Islamists, but has since vowed to retake it.
The fighting in Buale came as tension gripped Burhakaba, about 60km south-east of Baidoa, which was occupied on Saturday after heavy fighting between government forces and an Islamist-allied militia.
Residents said hundreds of villagers were fleeing the town in anticipation of new violence.
"The tension is too high and everybody is expecting war," said local elder Osman Ibrahim Aden. "People have started fleeing their villages to escape."
The new clashes come as the Islamists and the government are under increasing pressure to take part in a third round of Arab League-mediated peace talks in Khartoum set to begin on October 30.
Somalia has been without a functioning central administration since 1991 and the government, formed in neighbouring Kenya in 2004, has been wracked by in-fighting and unable to assert control over much of the country.
Source: AFP, Oct. 22, 2006