Mogadishu Turns Toward Chaos

Ethiopia invaded Somalia last December  to rid the land of the Islamic Courts Union, a group accused of harboring al-Qaeda  The Ethiopians thought they would be out in two weeks, replaced by an African Union peacekeeping force.

None of that has happened. Five months later, the Islamic Courts Union movement has morphed into a larger coalition of Union members and disaffected nationalsts, distrustful of Ethiopia and vowing to fight its purportedly imperial ambitions in Somalia. Mogadishu is a scene of chaos.

[q url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6583095.stm"]Many bodies are lying around Mogadishu and hundreds of people are fleeing towards the Kenyan border, says the BBC Swahili reporter Khadra Mohammed said.

Some have serious injuries and need urgent medical attention, she says.

Only people with money are able to move out of the capital on public transport vans, most of the dead are poor people, our correspondent says.

War punishes the poor, as always.