Since January 2007 (the onset of Zenawi’s invasion) at least 870,000 civilians have fled the chaos in Mogadishu alone — two-thirds of the city’s population. Across south-central Somalia, 1.1 million Somalis are displaced from their homes.
[Following the invasion] Insurgent fighters quickly adopted hit-and-run tactics…Ethiopian and TFG forces developed patterns of responding to those attacks that have since become part of the day-to-day reality of life in Mogadishu — reacting to indiscriminate mortar attacks in kind, with devastating barrages of rocket, mortar, and artillery fire across populated neighborhoods.
ENDF [Ethiopian National Defense Forces] forces in Mogadishu have routinely and indiscriminately bombarded populated residential areas of Mogadishu since March 2007. They have made regular use of “Katyusha” rockets in Mogadishu, often fired from BM-21 “Grad” multiple-rocket launchers.
Ethiopian forces carried out similar indiscriminate bombardments in fighting in the strategically important town of Beletweyne. ENDF forces responded by indiscriminately bombarding large swathes of the western districts of the town for three days beginning in July 2008. Humanitarian organizations estimated that at the end of July, 74,000 people—more than 75 percent of the town’s population—had been displaced as a direct result of the bombardment and related fighting....read more...
