By Sahra Abdi Ahmed
Friday, March 09, 2007
The strategic port was the last major city the Ethiopians and government forces took in their swift December victory over militant Islamists who had controlled most of southern Somalia for six months.
"Yesterday afternoon, our friends who have been helping us in training and security left," Kismayu Police Chief Abdi Mohamed Abdulle told Reuters, adding the Ethiopian contingent had amounted to about 2,000 soldiers.
The lucrative port of Kismayu has been fought over by local militias for years and was a source of tension inside the government. The Islamists forcibly took it over from militias controlled by the government's defense minister.
Ethiopia had no immediate comment on the troop withdrawal, but Addis Ababa has started pulling some of its soldiers out of a country where they are viewed by many Somalis as invaders from a historic Horn of Africa rival.
The Ethiopians are to make way for a proposed 8,000-strong AU force, the first elements of which have been given the same reception as the Ethiopians -- near-daily attacks by insurgents which are thought to include defeated Islamist fighters.
More than 1,000 Ugandan peacekeepers, the vanguard of a force designed to help the shaky government tame a nation in anarchy since 1991, landed this week in Mogadishu -- arguably one of the toughest cities in the world to police.
Source: Reuters, Mar 09, 2007