Somalia

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces and Islamic insurgents in Somalia's capital has killed nearly 400 people, mostly civilians, in the past four days, a Somali human rights group said yesterday. The fighting abated long enough yesterday to allow thousands of people to flee the ruined coastal city on foot and in donkey carts, cars and trucks. About 47,000 people -- mainly women and children -- have abandoned their homes in the past 10 days, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

KIGALI, Rwanda -- American jets and Ethiopian forces recently conducted strikes in Somalia in support of that nation's fledgling democratic government. The event received passing notice in the United States, but to those of us working in East Africa, and specifically in Rwanda, it was cause for optimism. It demonstrated the willingness of Ethiopia and Somalia to put aside past differences and unite against radical Islamists who threaten both. It suggested that an era of thinking and acting regionally may have arrived in East Africa.

MOGADISHU, Somalia --Somali officials said yesterday that dozens of people were killed in a U.S. airstrike on Sunday, most of them Islamist fighters fleeing in armed pickup trucks across a remote, muddy stretch of the Kenya-Somalia border. U.S. officials said al-Qaida terrorists had been the target of the strike, which they said had killed about a dozen people. But the officials acknowledged that the identities of the victims were still unknown. Several residents of the area, in the southern part of the country, said dozens of civilians had been killed, and news of the attack immediately set off new waves of anti-American anger in Mogadishu, Somalia's battle-scarred capital, where the United States has a complicated legacy.

JOHANNESBURG -- American military personnel and their Somali allies were sifting through the aftermath of a battle with suspected Islamist militants in Somalia yesterday, a day after the U.S. Navy bombarded that nation's hilly shoreline with high explosives. Investigators have found the bodies of at least eight fighters -- including one carrying a U.S. passport, a senior Somali official said. "We have found an American, British, Swedish and some Middle Eastern passports on the corpses," said Hassan Dahir Mohamoud, the vice president of Puntland, a semi-autonomous state in northern Somalia where the fighting took place.

As Ethiopian troops made haste toward Mogadishu at the request of Somalia's legitimate government, the 22-member Arab League demanded that Ethiopia withdraw its troops "immediately." In other words, the idea of national sovereignty, the hallmark of international law, means little to the Arab League. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan claim not only to understand international law but also to follow it. Of course, such countries have broken nearly every international convention on human rights, but for these countries to demonstrate outright disdain for the very foundation of international law is reprehensible.

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Their leaders slipped out of this capital under the cover of darkness. The plum jobs are gone. Their former offices were the first to be looted in a spasm of vandalism last week by angry young men. Yesterday, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi renewed his offer of amnesty to midlevel officials and fighters of Somalia's now-defunct Islamic Courts Union who lay down their weapons. He also issued a three-day deadline for everyone in Mogadishu to turn in their guns.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- NATO's decision to use military force in Kosovo has reinforced the view among many Africans that the world community is less inclined to intervene to halt conflicts in Africa than it is in many other regions.Coming as East Africa marks the fifth anniversary of a three-month ethnic rampage in Rwanda that killed an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, the intervention in Yugoslavia has sparked a debate about when and for whom world powers are willing to take action.

WASHINGTON -- While much of the Western world has focused its attention on the peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, scant attention has been paid to the substantial progress made in resolving regional conflicts in Africa.Last month, Sierra Leone's fledgling democratic government signed a peace agreement with Revolutionary United Front (RUF) guerrillas, perhaps bringing an end to a bitter eight-year conflict that has claimed 50,000 to 100,000 lives, maimed countless children through malicious amputations, and forced more than 1 million people to become refugees.

PEACE MAY RESULT from the slaying of Somalia's faction chief Mohamed Farah Aidid. But it is not assured, though the tTC population is frightened, hungry, sick of chaos and ready for an end to civil war.General Aidid was the principal barrier to any accord. He ruled south Mogadishu and battled with the chief of north Mogadishu, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, as well as with defectors and other clan leaders. He declared himself president. He prevented any coalition from working.Some ragtag enemy's bullet did what the U.S. Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, CIA and NSA could not do. It found Aidid.

U.S. MARINES went ashore in Somalia in 1992 to set up Operation Restore Hope, with a secret asset -- reservist Sgt. Hussein Aidid of Los Angeles, 30, who had lived in the U.S. since age 14, as interpreter and guide. That he was the third son of Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid, militia chief of the Habr-Gedir sub-clan of the Hawiye clan and boss of south Mogadishu, did not hurt.After the United Nations declared General Aidid the problem and ordered his arrest, Sergeant Aidid was packed home. The U.S. went after the warlord, who killed Americans, humiliated the superpower and turned American public opinion against the operation, mission creep and ever sending American troops on ill-defined missions without exit route or date.

The Somali pirates have come roaring back into the media spotlight. Indeed, after a lull in early 2009, they have returned with a vengeance, capturing at least six ships in less than a week. The Maersk Alabam a incident has shocked many and prompted insistent demands to the Navy to solve this crisis, and solve it quickly. But the problem is not that simple. Naval operations, no matter how adroitly performed, cannot eradicate Somali piracy. Why? Historical case studies reveal that resilient piracy is a complex activity that relies on five essential factors beyond the realm of naval capability.

I wholeheartedly approve of the way President Barack Obama handled the pirate hostage situation ("Shots end crisis," April 13). I heard some talking heads on Fox News chastising him for calling out the U.S. Navy to deal with this situation. That's hogwash. U.S. maritime interests require the freedom of the seas, and the president, through the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, has a duty and a responsibility to protect those interests whenever and wherever they are threatened. I find it ironic that some of the same people who glorified the invasion of foreign countries in the name of somewhat questionable U.S. interests (in Iraq, Nicaragua, etc.)

The surprising thing about the deadly cat-and-mouse game between pirates holding an American sea captain hostage and U.S. warships shadowing them off Somalia's coast was that the outcome remained in doubt so long. The drama ended Sunday, when sharpshooters aboard the U.S.S. Bainbridge killed three of the pirates and a fourth surrendered. But even the safe release of Capt. Richard Phillips, whom the whole world was rooting for, couldn't obscure the irony that for three days a handful of ragtag marauders held the world's most powerful navy at bay. The standoff exemplifies the challenge of asymmetrical warfare, a threat the U.S. increasingly is encountering in hot spots around the world.

Adrift with his captors in sight of U.S. warships, the American sea captain being held for ransom by Somali pirates briefly escaped their lifeboat by jumping overboard, a U.S. official said Friday, but was recaptured and brought back. The U.S. military said Richard Phillips, who was taken by the pirates from the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama on Wednesday, appeared unharmed after the escape attempt. The military, which has been maintaining real-time video surveillance via an unmanned drone overhead, observed him moving around on the lifeboat after he was recaptured.

As a freed U.S.-flagged freighter cruised out of Somalia's crime-infested waters Thursday, a tense standoff continued for a second day between a U.S. warship and a tiny lifeboat, adrift with four stranded pirates and the American captain they were holding hostage. A day after the American crew managed to turn the tables on pirates who had seized their cargo ship, the Danish-owned Maersk Alabama headed for safer waters with 18 armed guards from the U.S. destroyer Bainbridge on board. Reports suggested that the cargo ship, which is carrying food and other humanitarian aid for African nations, including food destined for Catholic Relief Services programs in Rwanda, was headed to its original destination of Mombasa, Kenya.

You know the security situation of a given region has taken a turn for the worse when Blackwater Worldwide, the security services behemoth best known for its work in Iraq, sees the downturn as a business opportunity. Recent reports indicate the North Carolina-based firm is building a small but potent flotilla to deliver maritime protection against the increased threat of international piracy. Pirates were on the wane and marginalized to a select few global waterways only a few years ago, but their attacks have skyrocketed off Somalia's coast, the longest in Africa and located along one of the most heavily trafficked shipping lanes in the world.

The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that 2 million children have died in wars in the past decade: Somalia, Afghanistan, Darfur, Colombia, Iraq, Congo. And today Israel and Hamas militants are battling. In southern Israel, scores of children have been terrorized by a barrage of Hamas rockets. In the Gaza Strip, children are dying. Of the nearly 700 killed there, more than 100 are children, according to published reports. Countless others have been injured. Thousands of children who have escaped injury are suffering from a lack of food, safe housing, clean water and medical care.

Earthquakes kill three in part of Indonesia JAKARTA, Indonesia : A series of powerful earthquakes killed at least three people in eastern Indonesia today, cutting power lines and badly damaging buildings. A 7.6-magnitude quake struck at 4:43 a.m. local time about 85 miles from Manokwari, Papua, at a depth of 22 miles, the U.S. Geological Agency said. It was followed by a strong 7.5 aftershock. Three bodies were found, including that of a 10-year-old girl, a hospital director said. Nineteen other patients were treated for injuries.

It was an unabashed attack on the high seas that delivered an extraordinary bounty - $100 million worth of crude oil. But the Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi Arabia-owned supertanker off the coast of Kenya over the weekend - and later seized two freighters in the Gulf of Aden and defied an Indian navy vessel sent to intercept them - have shown a brazenness that should chill commercial shipowners. Combating piracy at sea has become a matter of international urgency that will require a coordinated response on many fronts.

Iraqi gunman who killed 2 U.S. soldiers is slain BAGHDAD: Two U.S. soldiers were killed and six others were wounded by an Iraqi soldier in an attack in the northern city of Mosul yesterday, according to the U.S. military, Iraqi security officials and witnesses. The shooter was immediately killed by other U.S. soldiers, they added. While the deaths of the U.S. soldiers were confirmed by the U.S. military, the circumstances surrounding the Mosul shooting remained in dispute. Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, said it began when two platoons of U.S. soldiers stopped at a combat outpost staffed by Iraqi soldiers.