Ethiopia completes troops’ pullout from Somalia

January 24, 2009 (ADDIS ABABA) — The Ethiopia army have completely withdrawn its troops from Somalia where it was during two year and redeployed it along the border with the troubled country, the ministery of defense announced yesterday.

After two years of presence in Somalia where they succeeded to impose the Transitional Somali Government and to restore some kind of state authority there, Addis Ababa decided to pull out its troops from the troubled neighboring country due to the lack of international support and also to express its feed up over the continual divisions and power struggle between the Somali parties of the government.

The Ethiopian ministry of defense said on Saturday that all its troops in Somalia have arrived to the border town of Dollo where they were welcomed by the residents there. The troops accomplished its mission and chased away the Eritrea’s backed Islamists fighters of Al-Shebab who constituted a danger, the ministry said.

However, a Somali official, Mohamed Ibrahim Habsade, a senior cabinet Minister, confirmed their departure but said they terminate their withdrawal from Baidoa near the border on Monday.

The Islamists of Al-Shebab that Ethiopia claims eradicating have carried out on Saturday a suicide car attack on an African Union peacekeepers base in the capital where 14 people were killed.

The spokesman for the small AU force AMISIOM, Major Barigye Ba-hoku, said no peacekeepers had been hurt. “That opposition group has massacred only innocent Somali people,” he said.

The parliament is expected to meet in neighbouring Djibouti on Monday to elect a new president. But before they lawmakers have to amend the constitution to allow the moderate Islamists of Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) to join the parliament.

Although the Ethiopian troops will remain stationed at the border ready to re-intervene if the political situation is deteriorated or the Islamists control again the Somali capital.

(ST)