Kenya on high alert over Somalia’s militia

[Gyppo]

Source: Xinhua News Agency

Date: 02 Dec 2009

NAIROBI, Dec 02, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) — By Daniel Ooko

Kenya has intensified security surveillance along its porous border with Somalia to prevent the fighting in the lawless Horn of Africa nation from spilling over into the country.

Internal Security Permanent Secretary Francis Kimemia said late Tuesday that security committees chaired by district commissioners in North Eastern Province were monitoring the latest gains made by Al-Shabaab rebels, who captured the border town of Dhobley at the weekend.

The Daily Nation newspaper on Wednesday quoted Kimemia as saying that all the fighting was taking place inside Somalia and not on Kenyan soil. The Al-Qaida-linked militant group captured the key town near the border with Kenya, sending hundreds of people fleeing across the border.

“We couldn’t stand this latest flare-up,” Ahmed Abdi, a Somali refugee, told the Daily Nation by telephone from the Dadaab Refugee Camp. “We had to do anything to cross into Kenya.”

The Kenyan government’s move follows Al-Shaabab’s latest incursion into another insurgent group — Hezbul-Islam’s territory, which yielded a huge battle that sent hundreds of refugees into Kenya.

But not all the displaced found their way into camps, and reports abound that a number of them have sought refuge in the Kenyan border town of Dhobley, which shares the same name with its Somali neighbor.

“Some of the people here came from as far away as Afmadow, the stronghold of Hezbul-Islam. Others came from Qoqaani, another town formerly controlled by the Hizbul militants,” a Dhobley resident told the newspaper.

The capture of the border town now gives Al-Shaabab dominion over the vast province of Lower Juba, which encompasses five towns, and which shares a long border with Kenya’s north eastern frontier.

Al-Shabaab insurgents, who Washington says are a proxy for Osama bin Laden’s group in Somalia, took control of Dhobley on Saturday after chasing rival Hizbul Islam rebels out of town.

Fighting between the two groups in recent days has killed at least 15 people and wounded 25 others in the Dobley area.

The two groups have been battling for parts of the lower Jubba district, particularly the port of Kismayo, which has provided a key source of revenue.

At the Garissa Provincial Hospital, sources told the newspaper that about 17 Somalis injured during the fighting between the rival rebels had sought treatment at the facility, and that they were yet to be released by Tuesday.

The radical groups were once allies in an effort to overthrow Somalia’s moderate Islamist government. They began fighting each other in October and later claimed they had resolved their dispute.

Islamist groups control much of southern Somalia and parts of the capital, Mogadishu, after a nearly three-year war against the transitional government.

The country has endured 18 years of chaos and conflict since the fall of the last stable central government in 1991.

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