Somali gunmen raid British aid group's office

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somali gunmen pillaged the office of a Britain-based aid group operating in the lawless country's capital, officials and witnesses said Saturday.

The gunmen stole computers and other documents from the Muslim Aid office late Friday in Mogadishu's southern K4 district.

"Armed men stormed the premises and ordered the guards to open the offices, taking everything inside including the computers," a local Muslim Aid official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"They took all the equipment including the safe," said witness Mohamed Osman who lives near the office.

Last week, gunmen closed three offices of US aid group International Medical Corps (IMC) in Somalia's sothwestern region after they stormed the buildings and confiscated equipment.

The raid on IMC's offices came a day after rampaging crowds looted relief food destined to some of the country's 3.2 million people facing hunger.

Several aid workers, including foreigners, have been repeatedly targeted by armed groups in the Horn of African nation, one of the world's most lawless.

Aid groups have scaled down operations in Somalia owing to growing insecurity largely blamed on Islamist militants who have waged a guerrilla war since they were ousted by a joint Somali-Ethiopian offensive in early 2007.

Source: AFP

US Navy: 4 failed pirate attacks off Somali coast

The U.S. Navy says there were four failed pirate attacks in the last 24 hours off the lawless Somali coast despite the presence of several American warships guarding a hijacked ship full of weapons.

Navy Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain, says three attacks were averted because the crew members escaped at high speed.

Another attack was foiled because the ladder the pirates brought to climb onto the ship was too short.

Campbell said Saturday that three of the attacks were in the Gulf Aden and the precise location of the fourth was unknown.

Last week's attack on a Ukrainian ship laden with 33 Soviet-designed tanks and weapons has focused international attention on piracy off Somalia.

Source: AP

Ethiopia frees Kenyan 'Islamists'

Eight Kenyan men deported to Ethiopia and jailed as terror suspects for more than a year have returned to Kenya.

The eight were imprisoned in 2007 on suspicion of being members of an Islamic militia driven out of Somalia by Ethiopian troops.

Human rights activists and Muslim groups say Kenya's government rounded up and deported terror suspects after thousands of people fled Somalia.

A Kenyan official said all eight had now been returned to their homes.

"Eight Kenyans who had been fighting with Somali separatists and who had been held in Ethiopia were early this morning returned home to Kenya," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said in a statement.

"Investigations have revealed that these Kenyans had travelled to Somalia in 2006 to get militia training and were recruited into terrorist cells by international terrorists operating in southern Somalia," the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

'Mass rendition'

But a Kenyan human rights lawyer said he would be encouraging all eight to sue the Kenyan government for deporting them in the first place, the Associated Press reported.

Human Rights Watch, the US-based rights organisation, has regularly voiced concern about Ethiopia's treatment of detainees.

Earlier this week the group said at least 150 men from a wide range of nations had been rounded up close near the border with Somalia after the fall of the Union of Islamic Courts in January 2007.

They were then deported either to Somalia or to Ethiopia.

And a BBC investigation uncovered evidence of the poor conditions endured by detainees at a jail in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, known as "Africa's Guantanamo".

The prisoners there were part of what the BBC investigation termed the first mass rendition of terrorist suspects in Africa.

Mr Mutua, the Kenyan spokesman, insisted that the men were deported to Somalia because they claimed to be Somali nationals. Once in Somalia they were then sent on to Ethiopia.

Source: BBC

Somalia Islamists rename Kismayo airport

MOGADISHU (AFP) — The Islamist administration of Somalia's southern port of Kismayo on Saturday renamed the airport after a 16th century warrior and invited airlines to use it instead of Mogadishu's airport.

"We announce today that the airport in Kismayo is ready to serve the people and we call on airlines to use it," spokesman Sheikh Hasan Yaqub said.

"The airport is named after the former Somali holy war leader Imam Ahmed Gurey and we have told commercial airlines to use it," said Sheikh Ahmed Haydar, another Kismayo official.

Gurey is a mythical figure in Somalia. A fervent proponent of Muslim expansionism, Gurey embarked on a conquest of Abyssinia which brought three-quarters of modern-day Ethiopia under control.

A joint push by the hardline Shebab movement and forces loyal to southern rebel leader Hassan Turki, who is listed as a terrorist financier by Washington, brought Kismayo back under Islamist control in August.

Kismayo is a key trading gateway for Somalia and the Shebab dealt a further blow to the country's western-backed transitional government last month by declaring an embargo on Mogadishu international airport.

Commercial flights have stopped landing there and attempts by African peacekeepers to continue using the facility have triggered deadly exchanges of mortar fire in the capital.

Somalia's Islamists are beginning to re-impose a tough form of Sharia law in the areas they control, two years after being ousted from power by Ethiopian troops.

Kismayo airport was closed less than a week after the Islamists recaptured the town when they shot at a small plane attempting to land.

Source: AFP