At least
14 people were killed and more than 20 injured as heavy fighting broke
out in Mogadishu after government troops launched a dawn attack on a
house belonging to a former militia leader as part of a disarmament
campaign, residents and officials said.
Explosions and gunfire were heard on Friday
in the Somali capital as government troops backed by African Union
forces battled militiamen.
Government forces want to disarm fighters
loyal to Ahmed Daaci, a former militia leader and ex-district
commissioner of Mogadishu’s Wadajir.
Fatima Ali, a Mogadishu mother of four, said the battle sent everyone in her house to the ground for safety.
“We are very terrified,” she said. “We haven’t heard something like this for some time,” she told the Associated Press.
Disarmament campaign
Launched last week, the Somali government’s
latest disarmament campaign is an attempt to reduce the number of
weapons that could fall into the hands of al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
Raids over the last week have netted about
500 guns and hundreds of boxes of ammunition, said Mohamed Yusuf, the
spokesman for Somalia’s national security ministry.
The Small Arms Survey, a research project
based in Switzerland, says world governments in recent years have
covertly delivered “tens of thousands of small arms and light weapons to
various armed groups in Somalia despite a long-standing UN arms
embargo”.
Somali civilians own more than 500,000 guns, the group estimates.
During the early 1990s, US Marines fighting
militia leader Mohammed Farah Aidid tried to carry out a disarmament
campaign. It had only limited success.
Some believe the campaign is a political
witch hunt aimed at weeding out rivals of the country’s leadership as
Somalia gears up for a proposed 2016 national election.
A proposed disarmament law has been approved by the government’s cabinet but has not yet been voted on by parliament.
