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| ‘US arms to Somalia will increase violence’ |
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
MOGADISHU: A Somali Islamic insurgent says weapons and ammunition the United States recently supplied to Somalia’s embattled government will only increase violence in the war-wracked country.
Sheik Hassan Ya’qub, a spokesman for the militant group al-Shababin the port town of Kismayo, was responding to an announcement by United States officials last week that the Obama administration had supplied arms and provided military training worth just under $10 million to the shaky official government.
“The weapons sent to the so-called government will only escalate violence in Somalia and we, the holy warriors, believe that we will eventually seize them,” said Ya’qub.
Over the past two months, President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed’s government has been come under heavy on-off attacks from Islamic insurgents pounding government positions with mortars and targeting senior officials in suicide attacks.
During an intense two-week period of fighting in the capital in May about 200 civilians were killed.
It is unclear how al-Shabab, an extremist Islamic group fighting to overthrow the government, will follow through on its threat to seize the arms.
US officials said last week the arms were supplied through the African Union force in the Somali capital, which has firm control of Mogadishu’s main air and sea port even though Al-Shabab controls other parts of Mogadishu.
The US considers al-Shabab a terrorist group with links to al-Qaeda, which al-Shabab denies. The group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is trying to drive out the government and install a strict form of Islam.
In May, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development a group of seven countries in the Horn of Africa region that has led past peace talks on Somalia imposed a sea and air blockade to stop military supplies reaching the Islamic insurgents in Somalia. It is not clear whether the blockade is effective.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
