An anti-tank mine, set off by remote control in the Somali town of Baladwayne, wounded five Ethiopian soldiers. The attack prompted the occupying troops to unleash gunfire into a crowd of Somali civilians. Osman Adan, a local resident, said; “An Ethiopian truck was blown up … The Ethiopian troops immediately opened fire indiscriminately with heavy machine-guns.� Adan said seven civilians were caught in the crossfire. Four Somali civilians have been confirmed dead.

Journalist Ali Dahir said, “Two seriously injured soldiers were being removed from the truck. There was a lot of blood at the scene. Nobody knows whether the Ethiopian soldiers died or not.” The detonation of this remote control device highlights the fact that more sophisticated weaponry is now being employed by anti-government forces.

Somalia�s transitional government says Ethiopian troops are there to aid its operations against Islamic Court fighters, who were forced from Mogadishu in December with Ethiopian and American assistance. Ethiopia now wants to pull its troops from Somalia as soon as the African Union has at least half of its planned 8,000 troops deployed in the country. Many African nations have refused to send their own soldiers as part of the AU force due to previous attacks on international peacekeepers.

US troops have been working to rid Somalia of the Islamic Courts ever since the campaign began in the oil rich nation. The US claims it�s targeting al-Qaeda cells, though the victims of its airstrikes are most often innocent civilians. Such extrajudicial killings of suspected terrorists, which are accepted tools of American and Israeli government policy, are violations of international law.

source