Chaos returns

last updated 8 January 2015

Mogadishu, Somalia

Thousands of Somali families—nearly 50,000 people—fled Mogadishu this week, during a lull in fierce fighting that has claimed hundreds of lives. Ethiopian troops that back the interim Somali government have been bombing city neighborhoods, killing residents thought to be loyal to the Islamist opposition or merely opposed to the government. Some of those fighting the Ethiopians are not Islamists but members of the city’s dominant Hawiye clan. The Hawiyes say interim President Abdullahi Yusuf favors his Darod clansmen. The Islamists controlled Mogadishu for about six months and installed sharia law before the Ethiopian invasion in December drove them out.