News outlets are reporting dozens of casualties in Mogadishu after two days of fighting between the Transitional Federal Government and al Shabab. The fighting injured and displaced many others.
AP states that al Shabab initiated this round of fighting.
Militants attacking from the north on Wednesday reached to within a mile (2 kilometers) of the presidential place in the heart of the capital, Mogadishu, before African Union peacekeepers in tanks reinforced government troops, residents said.
[…]
Neither the Islamists or the U.N.-backed government can take and hold enough ground for a decisive victory.
The government is supported by around 5,300 African Union peacekeepers, whose tanks and armored vehicles help them to outgun the insurgents. The insurgents favor mobile hit-and-run attacks, using snipers and mortar fire to make it hard for the government’s poorly trained and irregularly paid soldiers to hold their position.
The peacekeepers used tanks to help government forces when the insurgents got within a mile of the presidential palace, said resident Omar Salad. Other residents confirmed his account.
This uptick in violence, then, does not mean that a planned TFG offensive against al Shabab has begun:
The government urged residents to vacate the areas where fighting had taken place as it planned to take on the rebels again, but said it had not yet started a long-awaited offensive to dislodge the insurgents from Mogadishu once and for all.
Nor has this round, as the quote above mentioned, produced a clear victor:
Both sides claimed victory after the fierce battles in the capital that had died down by late Thursday.
“We drove away al Shabaab and captured most of their strongholds in the north of Mogadishu,” Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, Somalia’s state minister for defence, told Reuters.
Al Shabaab’s spokesman said his fighters had set ablaze an armoured vehicle belonging to African Union troops.
What may be new – and I hope commenters will correct me if I’m wrong – is the intensity of involvement by AU troops not just on defense but on some degree of counter-offensive fighting as well. Al Jazeera English reports that “[recent] deaths occur[r]ed after government troops backed by African Union peacekeepers raided a position held by armed opposition in the north of the war-torn capital.”
Is the larger government offensive going to come? Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed says yes, and is open to Western backing. But for the moment, the TFG is still playing defense. Stalemate continues, with civilians once more bearing the brunt of the suffering.
Sahel Blog 