Uganda have mercy please

Ethiopian military who arrived Mogadishu in December last year after giving a chase to the Islamic courts have stayed with us longer than expected probably on request from the TFG.

But unknown militia who are mainly suspected to be groups of mixed interests including remnants of the Islamic courts attacked them in their bases which forced the Ethiopians to return fire in a more disproportionate way, killing innocent civilians.

With the arrival of the first batch of African Union peacekeepers from Uganda, do we anticipate the dawn of a new era of peace in Somalia or we predict a much more violent nation in the heart of the Horn?

Upon their arrival, they have been welcomed with mortar attacks instead of roses and green leaves though no casualty has been reported. These unknown militia have slammed rockets in the airport while a high-level reception was underway.

Knowing nothing about the behavior of the Ugandan contingent we judged them by the standards of the Ethiopians who disproportionately fired back if militia attacked them. So we thought it was highly likely to receive retaliation from the Ugandans.

In an effort to bottle up all means of negligence, most of the people have deserted the streets and retreated to houses and buildings that had concrete roofing or stayed with their families hoping that the mortar will not land on them while at the same time contemplating with the possibility of media staff reporting a story about their family buried under the rubble.

But barely the Ugandan forces finished their second day in Mogadishu when militia of unknown identity attacked them. And in response to the attack they fired at everybody without knowing who was the culprit and who was not.

A bomb has exploded inside the Al-Fatxi Bar in K4 inn Mogadishu where I frequently have my morning coffee and chat with friends there. It is right in front of the dilapidated Statue of the great Somali hero, Ahmed Gurey in the area of Cinema Equatore.

Early this morning I rushed to the Fatxi Bar to find out if someone I knew had been killed in the blast. In fact I feel deeply sympathetic to all Somalis dying in these senseless attacks but the pain would run deeper if someone you knew was among the victims.

What I saw was a real horror. There were pieces of dead bodies scattered here and there, which were unidentifiable as which piece belonged to which body.