Somalia clan fighting kills 20 as countryside plunges into violence
Posted: 19 August 2007 0856 hrs

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MOGADISHU: Rival sub-clans fought over access to wells in central Somalia, killing at least 20 people and wounding several others on Saturday, elders said, as the countryside sank into a vortex of violence.

Also Saturday, two people were killed and four others wounded in the capital Mogadishu in a fresh spate of insurgent attacks against government targets, they said.

The pitched battles between Murursade and Hawadle sub-clans, who have previously clashed over pasture land and water, occurred in Hiraan region that has been scarred by clan rivalries.

"More than 20 people were killed in Gorof and Bogo villages," Abdullahi Haji, an elder, told AFP.

Although it was not clear if the fatalities were civilians or fighters, Haji warned of reprisals if elders fail to broker an armistice.

Several elders confirmed the fatalities from the latest fighting that has no links with the Islamist-led rebellion against the transitional government mainly in Mogadishu.

Witnesses said several wounded were treated in hospitals in Hiraan's capital Beledweyne, northwest of Mogadishu.

"I saw many people being taken to Beledweyne for treatment. They said many others were lying dead in the villages," said Beledweyne resident Osman Aden Ares.

The feuding sub-clans, which belong to the Somali dominant Hawiye clan, clashed in August killing at least seven people, part of a deep-rooted rivalry that turned more bloody when fighters accessed modern weaponry.

Bitter clan grudges and endless squabbling over water and pasture boil over during the dry season when pastoralists scramble for resources in the country's dustbowl plains, where camels, goats, sheep and cattle are key to their livelihood.

The government's fixation on Mogadishu, the epicentre of Somali unrest, has left much of the countryside under the control of clan elders, whose influence is waning owing to changing dynamics of the conflict.

Few countries have disastrously collapsed like Somalia, a poor nation of about 10 million that has been wracked by a bloody scramble for power since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

The scale of violence and repeated meddling by neighbouring countries has defied numerous internationally-backed peace talks and a key peacekeeping initiative in the mid-1990s.

The 1993 shock killing of United Nations and United States peacekeepers quelled any appetite among Western powers for further intervention, abandoning the country to a morass of violence.

Since then, anarchy and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of people, with insecurity limiting sufficient humanitarian intervention.

Mogadishu has experienced one of its deadliest weeks since Ethiopian troops backing Somali government forces wrested final control of the capital from an Islamist militia in April.

Witnesses said two people -- an elder and a woman -- were killed and four wounded in Saturday's attacks, in which two district commissioners escaped.

According to a casualty toll compiled by AFP, more than 40 Somalis -- many of them civilians -- have been killed since August 11.

Somali troops, thousands of Ethiopian soldiers and at least 1,500 African Union peacekeepers from Uganda, currently patrolling the war-battered capital, have failed to stem the insurgency.

Human Rights Watch said in a report released earlier this week that the spring fighting had seen war crimes committed by all sides and denounced the general disregard for civilians.

Mogadishu is currently hosting more than 1,000 clan delegates attending a frail peace conference yet again attempting to reconcile feuding factions and end violence.

But the government-sponsored event which kicked off in July is being boycotted by the Islamists and a large section of the Hawiye clan, dominant in Mogadishu that is home to troops, rebels, bandits, militiamen and perhaps extremist fighters.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pleaded with Somali delegates to undertake "genuine political dialogue" to overcome the conflict that has beleaguered the volatile Horn of Africa region.

Somali watchers have warned that the government, which enjoys the West's backing, might unravel into splinter factions if the talks fail to decisively end the bloodbath. - AFP/ac