Somali President formally announces state of emergency

June 22, 2009 (MOGADISHU) — Somali President today formally declared a state of emergency in the war torn country while extremist Islamic group sentenced four men to each have a hand and a leg cut off.

“The Somali government decided to impose state of emergency on the country so that we can overcome the difficult situation the country is going through,” said President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in a press conference in his residence in Mogadishu on Monday.

The declaration of emergency state comes after a vote by the Somali cabinet last week.

Last Saturday the speaker of the Somali parliament called for the military intervention of the neighboring countries to support the embattled government. Four senior Somali government officials were separately killed in insurgent attacks in last week while hundreds of civilians and combatants were either killed or wounded in the clashes.

The announcement of emergency state is seen as purely formal because the government has no control of large parts of the country.

Also a court run by Al-Shebab insurgents in a Mogadishu stronghold sentenced four men on Monday to each have a hand and a leg amputated as punishment for robbery of mobile phones and guns.

“Today, the Islamic court sentences these four men who carried out robberies to have their opposite hand and leg amputated,” said Sheikh Abdul Haq, judge of the sharia court in the Al-Shebab-held Suqa Holaha area of the Somali capital.

The group, which is considered as a proxy for Al-Qaeda in Somalia, is trying to drive out the government and install a strict form of Islamic legislation.

Last week, Kenya said it would not sit back and watch security in Somalia deteriorate further and vowed to take action while Ethiopia said an international mandate was needed to the Somali government’s call for military help from its neighbors.

However different reports mention the presence of the Ethiopian troops already inside the troubled Horn of Africa nation.

Sources close to Western embassies in Nairobi confirmed to the Christian Science Monitor news reports that Ethiopian troops have taken positions in the Central Somali town of Beledweyne, and that Ethiopian troops were also active in the Gelgadud region north of the capital of Mogadishu.

Further, Kenyan forces are reportedly amassing along the Somali border as a defensive measure, in what Kenya’s foreign minister described in a press conference as a matter of “national security.”

(ST)