20100706
AFRICANEWS

Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is seeking urgent support from the international community to help his government combat Islamist insurgents. He told the emergency summit of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) his government cannot fight the rebels alone.


“Somalia is in the hands of Al-Qaeda and extremist groups. The whole issue needs urgent treatment,” Ahmed said at the summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“The Somali state is facing a very hard attack from the terrorist groups, which are allied with Al-Qaeda,” the president told leaders from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Djibouti who came together in the Ethiopian capital to review the current situation in Somalia.

At the end of the summit, IGAD decided to deploy 2,000 peacekeepers to Somalia to join other 6,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi. The statement came as Al-Qaeda linked group of Al-shabaab and Hizbul Islam militias closed on the presidential place.

Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was appointed in 2009 and seen as Somalia’s best chance in two decades of war but he has failed to expand his authority which remains only a few blocks in the capital.