 Heavily armed Somali fighters have occupied Mogadishu's main hospital, forcing a near shutdown in key services to patients wounded in factional fighting that has rocked the city, witnesses said Tuesday. Dozens of gunmen from a US-backed warlord alliance took over the Keysaney Hospital in northern Mogadishu late Monday and refuse to leave despite appeals to do so and warnings the occupation violates international law, they said. Backed by machinegun-mounted pick-ups, members of the alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) entered the facility, causing some patients to flee, and set up positions on its roof, they said. "The ARPCT has occupied the hospital," one Keysaney medical worker told AFP. "They have put sandbags on the roof and there are battlewagons outside."
The International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross, which opened the hospital in 1992 and turned it over to the Somali Red Crescent two years later, called for fighters to leave and said it was deeply concerned for the remaining patients. "International humanitarian law prohibits the use of a hospital for the conduct of hostilities," the ICRC said in a statement, noting that medical services had been "reduced to a minimum" at a time of critical need. "The ICRC calls for the withdrawal of fighters from the hospital as soon as possible," it said.
| "Oh? Really? It does? I guess we'll just pack up and leave, then." |
A senior alliance commander involved in the occupation told AFP that the fighters had deployed at the hospital to protect it from a possible attack by Islamist militia they have been battling. "Our aim is not to take the hospital but to protect it from the Islamic courts militia that could prevent people from getting medical aid," he said. "The courts planned to take the hospital and turn it into an Islamic hospital and that is what we are against," he said. "Our fighters took no patients, looted nothing and did not interfere with the hospital's business." |