Ethopia bombs Somalia airports jihad ratlines

Washington Post:

Ethiopian fighter jets bombed two main airports in Somalia on Monday, including Mogadishu International Airport, in the first direct attack on the headquarters of an Islamic movement attempting to wrest power from the internationally recognized government.

Russian-made jets swept low over the capital at midmorning, dropping two bombs on Somalia's main airport, which recently reopened after the Islamic takeover of Mogadishu. An Associated Press reporter who arrived shortly after the strike saw one wounded woman taken away. The runway and one building used by the Islamic forces were damaged.

Shortly afterward, Baledogle Airport, about 60 miles outside Mogadishu, was hit, an Islamic soldier said. There were no reliable casualty reports available for either attack.

"The Ethiopian government is bombing non-civilian targets in Somalia in order to disable and prevent the delivery of arms and supplies to the Islamic courts," said Bereket Simon, an adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Ethiopia and the Somali government have long accused the Islamic council of recruiting foreign fighters into its ranks.

The Somali government started sealing its borders Monday in an attempt to keep foreigners from joining the Islamists. Residents living along Somalia's coast have seen hundreds of foreign Islamic fighters entering the country to answer calls by religious leaders to wage a holy war against largely Christian Ethiopia.

But the move is unlikely to have any major immediate effect, particularly along Somalia's 1,860-mile coastline. The country has no coast guard or navy and piracy is rampant.

...

Somali troops, backed by Ethiopian soldiers, also captured a key border town early Monday and residents celebrated as government soldiers moved through the town and headed south in pursuit of fleeing Islamic militiamen, a Somali officer said.

Islamic fighters left the town of Belet Weyne, on the Somali-Ethiopian border, overnight after Ethiopian fighter jets bombed Islamic positions Sunday, residents said.

...
I have often stated that most of the foreign fighters in Iraq came through the Damascus airport. The Ethiopian operation against he Somalia airports is an attempt to keep the same thing from happening there. While Somalia has little control over its coast, the US could put up an effective blockade if it brought more ships to the area. Isolating the battlefield would put the Islamist up against the Ethiopian hammer. The Islamist light infantry does not seem to have an answer for the Ethiopian air force at this point. We need to find ways to support the destruction of the Islamist in Somalia.

Bill Roggio has a round up of news on the Somalia front. He says the transitional government has chased the Islamist from two towns. Gateway Pundit says the report of a Somalia helicopter being shot down is using a bogus picture of a chopper that crashed in Iraq.

The stakes are pretty big for al Qaeda in this battle and the loss by the Islamist religious bigots would certainly hurt their propaganda campaign.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more