Garowe Online (Garowe)
16 February 2008
The interim President of Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, landed at the international airport in the capital Mogadishu Saturday morning as insurgents targeted the capital's main seaport with mortars.
Major roads linking Adan Adde International Airport and the presidential palace Villa Somalia were all shut off by Somali and Ethiopian troops, witnesses said.
Mogadishu Mayor Mohamed Dheere and intelligence boss Mohamed Darwish were among senior government officials welcoming the Somali leader at the airport.
President Yusuf did not address the media, but a spokesman told Garowe Online he will speak with journalists very soon.
The Somali president went to London for medical treatment last month and made a brief stopover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he held talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Closed roads were later reopened after President Yusuf reached Villa Somalia safely.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Islamic Courts has claimed responsibility for six mortars that hit the Mogadishu seaport last night.
Abdirahim Ali Mudey said they targeted the seaport because a ship docked there brought weapons and other materials for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
He dismissed comments by an AMISOM spokesman, who told the BBC that the mortars were "launched from Bakara market."
"That claim is untrue...we launched the attack at a location very close to the port," Mudey said.
None of the AU peacekeepers were wounded in the attack, but five Somalis suffered injuries during the blasts, according to the AMISOM spokesman.
Mudey said AMISOM peacekeepers are "not different" from Ethiopian troops because both groups are "forcefully controlling the Somali people."
Somali fighters linked to the ousted Islamic Courts movement have spearheaded a bloody insurgency since January 2007 when Somali-Ethiopian troops captured Mogadishu.
More than 6,000 people have been killed since and half of Mogadishu's population displaced by the violence, according to the United Nations and human rights groups.
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