Prometheus 6

Sorry. That's how I see it; when you're ranting against a particular religion you can't make exceptions.

Peace Hopes Fade in Somalia as Fighting Rages
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania, Dec. 22 — Any hope of a quick peace in Somalia vanished in a burst of artillery shells today, as fighting raged between rival governments of the country for a third day straight.

Residents in Baidoa, the seat of the internationally-recognized transitional government of Somalia, reported seeing columns of Ethiopian tanks rumbling toward the front lines, raising worries that Somalia’s internal problems could become regional ones.

Ethiopia has acknowledged sending several hundred military advisors to help the transitional government repel advances by Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement, which is based in Mogadishu, Somalia’s largest city and longtime capital. But Ethiopian officials continued to deny today that their troops were participating in combat.

“Tanks? What tanks?” said Zemedkun Tekle, the spokesman for Ethiopia’s information ministry. “We have not sent any heavy arms into Somalia. Such talk is just propaganda to stir up the people.”

According to United Nations officials, the transitional government, with the help of thousands of Ethiopian troops, has inflicted heavy losses on the Islamists, who rely on teenage boys to do much of their fighting. Today, the fighting was concentrated in towns surrounding Baidoa, where witnesses said that dead bodies were piling up in the streets.

As the two sides continued to blast each other with machine guns and howitzers, thousands of residents tried to flee the city for safer areas, piling into minibuses with sacks of clothes on their shoulders.

The Islamists say that they are at war on Ethiopia, Somalia’s large, powerful, Christian-dominated neighbor. The two countries have clashed repeatedly in the past over contested border areas, and the Islamist leaders, along with many ordinary Somalis, consider Ethiopian troops inside Somalia to be invaders.