The southern town of Kismayo was the stronghold of the Islamic militants:
The fighting broke out in Helashid, 11 miles northwest of the southern town of Jilib, the gateway to Kismayo, where an estimated 3,000 hardcore fighters were preparing for a bloody showdown.And the place for their final stand:
Islamic leaders vowed to make a stand against Ethiopia, which has one of the largest armies in Africa, or begin an Iraq-style guerrilla war.Well, I guess they'll have to start their insurgency because they were routed by the Ethiopian backed Somali government:
"My fighters will defeat the Ethiopians forces," Sheik Ahmed Mohamed Islan, the head of the Islamic movement in the Kismayo region told The Associated Press.
"Even if we are defeated we will start an insurgency. We will kill every Somali that supports the government and Ethiopians."
Mohamed Suldan Ali, a resident of Jilib, said the Islamic forces had littered the approach to the town with remote-controlled land mines. Another resident said the fighters had destroyed three approach bridges to the town.
Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian tanks and fighter jets captured the last major stronghold of a militant Islamic movement Monday, while hundreds of Islamic fighters — many of them Arabs and South Asians — were seen fleeing the town.But I think that the Ethiopians are being prepared to battle an insurgency:
Hundreds of gunmen, who apparently deserted from the Islamic movement, began looting the warehouses where the Council of Islamic Courts had stored supplies, including weapons and ammunition.
Gangs skirmished in the streets and the southern coastal city was descending into chaos, businessman Sheik Musa Salad said.
"Everything is out of control, everyone has a gun and gangs are looting everything now that the Islamists have left," he said.
Well-armed troops drove into Kismayo after clearing roads laced with land mines that had been left by Islamic fighters fleeing a 13-day military onslaught by government troops backed by Ethiopian tanks and MiG fighter jets.
"We have entered and captured the city," Maj. Gen. Ahmed Musa told The Associated Press while riding aboard a truck into Kismayo, where an estimated 3,000 hardline Islamic fighters had vowed to make a last stand but melted away under artillery fire.
The U.S. government has a counterterrorism task force based in neighboring Djibouti and has been training Kenyan and Ethiopian forces. The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet also has a maritime task force patrolling international waters off Somalia. It will prevent terrorists from launching an "attack or to transport personnel, weapons or other material," Commander Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, told the AP.This war has given us the chance to capture those who were involved in the 1998 bombing of our embassy:
Gedi said he spoke Sunday to the U.S. ambassador in Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, about sealing the Kenyan border with Somalia to prevent the three Al Qaeda suspects — Comorian Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, a Sudanese — from fleeing.
Somalia's interim government and its Ethiopian allies have long accused Islamic militias harboring Al Qaeda, and the U.S. government has said the 1998 bombers have become leaders in the Islamic movement in Africa.
"We would like to capture or kill these guys at any cost," Gedi told the AP. "They are the root of the problem."
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