Ethiopian troops accused of committing atrocities in Somalia

Somalis protest US airstrike A leading human rights group on May 6 accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women. In a new report, Amnesty International detailed chilling witness accounts of indiscriminate killings in the Horn of Africa country and called on the international community to stop the bloodshed. The London-based rights group said testimony it received suggested all parties to Somalia's conflict have committed war crimes. But it singled out Ethiopian troops, who are in the country to back Somalia's UN-sponsored government, for some of the worst violations. Somalia's shaky transitional government invited US-backed Ethiopian forces into the country to overthrow the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) government. Ethiopian troops deployed there in 2006 and ousted the UIC from the country's capitol. But since then, Mogadishu has been caught up in a guerrilla war between a poorly installed government and its Ethiopian allies and the deposed UIC who are now referred to as "insurgents." The US military has assisted the Ethiopian intervention with intelligence and airstrikes that have been criticized for killing civilians. Over the past year, the United States has carried out five known attacks in Somalia that officials have said were aimed at al-Qaida operatives. The attacks have killed civilians and insurgents fighting what they consider the illegal occupation of their country by Ethiopian troops. The latest US airstrike was on May 1. At least 1,000 residents of the central Somali town of Dusamareb held a protest against the deadly US attack. The missile strike killed an insurgent leader along with at least 10 others when a house in the town was hit. People shouted slogans such as "Down with the Bush administration." One of the organizers, Abdirasak Moalim Ahmed, said: "Our town has been severely affected by the recent US attack and still we fear because planes continue to fly over our city." The target of the raid was Aden Hashi Ayro, a senior commander of the militant group al-Shabab. Al-Shabab, which the US says is linked with al-Qaida, controls parts of central and southern Somalia. Al-Shabaab was formerly the armed wing of the UIC. The group says it is a purely Somali movement and denies involvement with al-Qaida. Some analysts say the United States has exaggerated the insurgents' ties to al-Qaida and are taking sides in a messy civil war at the cost of rising anti-American sentiment in a moderate Muslim country. The latest US air raid has put UN-sponsored peace talks under threat as the biggest opposition alliance said it was considering a boycott. The Alliance for Liberation and Reconstitution of Somalia said that it was considering pulling out of the talks scheduled for May 10. The negotiations are aimed at addressing the escalating fighting and humanitarian crisis in the country. Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the exiled chairman of the Alliance for Liberation and Reconstitution of Somalia said: "The US strike can undermine the UN-sponsored peace parlay." "We will reconsider taking part... due to the US military attack," he said. The alliance contains both moderates and hard-liners. Its participation is seen as being crucial to the success of the talks, which are scheduled to take place in neighboring Djibouti. Meanwhile, acclaimed human rights group Amnesty International said it obtained scores of reports of killings by Ethiopian troops that Somalis have described as "slaughtering like goats." In one case, "a young child's throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child's mother," the report says. Amnesty said some 6,000 civilians were reported killed and more than 600,000 were forced to flee their homes in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, last year. "The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured. Looting is widespread and entire neighborhoods are being destroyed," Michelle Kagari, Amnesty's deputy director for Africa, said in a statement from Nairobi that accompanied the report. The report quotes testimony from some 75 witnesses as well as scores of workers from non-governmental organizations. People are identified only by their first names to protect them from retaliation. In one testimony, Haboon, 56, said her neighbor's 17-year-old daughter was raped by Ethiopian troops. The girl's brothers tried to defend their sister, but the soldiers beat them and gouged their eyes out with a bayonet, Haboon was quoted as telling Amnesty. "The testimony we received strongly suggests that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties to the conflict in Somalia and no one is being held accountable," Kagari said. Ethiopian troops in Somalia are increasingly resorting to throat-slitting executions, Amnesty International says. In Mogadishu's Holwadag neighborhood, 15-year-old Barni recounted how she found her father with his throat cut when she came back from school and the rest of her family gone following an operation by Ethiopian forces. Ceeblaa, a 63-year-old woman from the capital's Wardhigley district told Amnesty she saw three men from her neighborhood being rounded up by Ethiopian troops. "The next morning, she saw the bodies of the three men on the street," the report said. "One was strangled with electrical wire. The second had his throat cut. The third had been chained ankle to wrist, and his testicles had been smashed." The rights group had recently accused Ethiopian forces of killing at least 21 people inside a Mogadishu mosque on Apr. 19, seven of whom had their throats slit. The Ethiopian government has denied the allegations and have demanded an apology. Amnesty has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated. Amnesty has also called for an international commission of inquiry into allegations of war crimes and said the role of other countries that have given military and financial support to perpetrators should also be investigated. US troops trained Ethiopian forces involved in military operations in Somalia, and the US government supplied military equipment to the Ethiopian military.