Bandits, gunmen and kidnappers draw the curtain on Somalia uneasy
Bandits, gunmen and kidnappers draw the curtain on Somalia uneasy peace
MOGADISHU (AFP): Armed bandits, gun-toting jobless youths and a gang of professional kidnappers seemed set to wreck Somalia's precarious foreign-imposed peace, officials said yesterday.
Bandits now delight in testing the will of the remaining 20,000-strong UN force drawn mainly from Third World countries, after the withdrawal late last month of all Western forces.
On Saturday, 15 bandits attempted to hijack a military crane in a convoy escorted by Pakistani troops from checkpoint 31 to Victory Base in south Mogadishu, while in the north of the city, groups of others carried out raids on the headquarters of the Nigerian contingent, UN military spokesman Chris Budge said.
After the abduction here last week of an American Red Cross employee and a Nigerian United Nations civilian employee, UN officials now admit that a ring of kidnappers exist in Somalia's war-shattered capital.
The American has not been heard of since the kidnapping Thursday, but the Nigerian escaped from his captors last Friday and reported back to work Saturday.
The kidnappers, apparently bold enough to take anyone from right under the noses of the UN troops, have caused panic among all foreigners here.
Wealthy Somalis also have to take precaution.
Three Somalis who had gone to buy food at the notoriously lawless Bakara market were seriously wounded last Friday after the kidnappers attempted to abduct them at the busy intersection leading to the Benadir Hospital, within a shooting range of a Pakistani roadblock.
The Pakistanis watched the incident but did nothing except fingering tightly on their service rifles.
Moroccan troops escorting a food convoy from the World Food Program dramatized the helplessness of the UN troops Wednesday when a group of Somali National Alliance (SNA) troops of warlord General Mohamed Farah Aidid stopped the convoy from reaching Merka claiming that the food would be distributed to their rivals.