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Somali insurgents to keep fighting

— Photo: AP

Internally displaced: Somalis queue for food being distributed by the United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) in Abdi Aziz district, north Mogadishu, on Sunday.

MOGADISHU: A powerful insurgent group poised to take over Somalia said on Wednesday it would fight until the country is ruled by Islamic law, even as Ethiopian troops who have been propping up the government packed up to leave.

The presence of the Ethiopian troops, whom many Somalis see as occupiers in their land, has been a rallying cry for the insurgents to gain recruits even as the militants’ strict form of Islam terrified people into submission.

But on Wednesday, the most powerful insurgent group said the departure after two years would not be enough to stop them fighting the government.

“We will not stop fighting even if the Ethiopian troops withdraw because our aim is to implement Islamic law across Somalia,” said Sheik Muktar Robow, leader of the most aggressive Islamist insurgency group, al-Shabab.

The Ethiopian troops were leaving amid fears their departure would allow Islamist insurgency to take over.

But it was unclear when the thousands of soldiers would actually leave. They are expected to leave in stages.

Ethiopia originally said it would end its unpopular presence here by the end of December, but officials have since declined to give an exact date because of fears of a power vacuum.

For two decades, Somalia has been beset by anarchy, violence and an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing from mortar shells, machine-gun crossfire and grenades.

Al-Shabab has taken control of vast amounts of new territory in recent months. Washington accuses him of harbouring the Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists who blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Many of the insurgency’s senior figures are Islamist radicals; some are on the U.S. State Department’s list of wanted terrorists. — AP

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