As Somali PM boasts of foreign military help, insurgents vow to punish neighboring involvement.

Nairobi, October 24, 2009 – Newly-trained Somali government forces will soon take on insurgents entrenched in the capital Mogadishu and across the south of the war-torn country, the Somali premier said Friday.

Speaking a day after an insurgent attack against the president in Mogadishu sparked clashes that left at least 21 civilians dead, Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke said he was confident the tide was turning.

"We're very confident that our forces will recapture the town (Mogadishu)," he told reporters in Nairobi after a meeting with UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe.

The transitional federal administration headed by cleric President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed currently controls less than half of Mogadishu's districts.

Sharmarke stressed that the government would not be content with recapturing Mogadishu only and would also seek to reassert control over southern Somalia, which has been firmly under insurgent control since last year.

"I can assure you that we are not looking at Mogadishu only," he said.

"Some officers have been trained in Kenya... Forces have been trained and recruited in the south and they are ready... Soon we will challenge the insurgents in those areas," Sharmarke said.

An alliance consisting of the Shabaab group and military leaders close to the Hezb al-Islam group in August 2008 conquered Kismayo, a key port and southern Somalia's largest city.

Much of southern Somalia has since been a stronghold for the Shabaab and allied foreign fighters.

Sharmarke claimed that as government forces were beefing up and receiving foreign assistance, the insurgents were getting weaker, as exemplified by the internal fighting that broke out among the rebels in Kismayo this month.

"The Shabaab are having lots of problems and they have lost the support of the population," he said. "Tension between them and Hezb al-Islam has caused them to withdraw from many parts of the country."

Fighting between the two insurgent factions erupted afresh in Kismayo on Wednesday after a two-week lull.

Meanwhile, Somali rebels threatened to attack the capitals of the two central African countries that have deployed troops to prop up Somali's transitional government.

"It was difficult to differentiate who is who among the bodies of mothers killed by the bombardment of Ugandan and Burundi troops," Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, the regional head of the Mogadishu area for Shabaab Islamist told reporters late Thursday.

"The children of those mothers must divert the war from Mogadishu to the capital of those nations that attacked Somalia," he said. "I hope they will do that."

He accused the Ugandan and Burundi troops of "indiscriminately shelling" areas populated by civilians every time they retaliate to an attack by Shabaab.

Source: Middle East Online, October 23, 2009

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