 Mogadishu (Rantburg News Service): Somali button men picked through Mogadishu's pock-marked streets retrieving corpses and going through their pockets for loose change on Monday as angry clan elders sent their own muscle to assist with the festivities. Eight days of mindless violence have accounted for 150 dead, the highest corpse count in a decade. Hundreds of terrified civilians fled the capital as gunnies shot up the place using mortars, rockets, heavy machineguns, and other delicacies of the season. Most of the dead and wounded were, as usual, civilians. The fighting paused on Sunday after the elders demanded a truce between the bloodthirsty Islamists and the mad-dog warlords. The elders said that if either side broke the truce they would rally support for the other. Islamist rod artists and warlord hard boyz could be seen clutching each other for comfort at the very thought. Dozens of fighters deployed by the elders rode on their trademark "technicals" — pickup trucks mounted with heavy machineguns, the very epitome of Islamic masculinity. They made a splendid sight as they drove through the shanty town of Siisii, impressing the remaining rubes and attracting admiring glances from the girlies, who were impressed by the size of their gun barrels. "The elders have brought in 50 really tough guyz, strong men with fearsome grimaces, who strut their stuff on five technicals," said Siyad Mohammad, a hard boy linked to the Islamic courts. "We are simply dying of envy over here. Nobody makes faces like those guys! Nobody! And their gun barrels! Mamma mia!" Mohammad said the ceasefire allowed his militiamen to retrieve corpses of civilians who died in their mortared homes, pile them up, and pose for pictures while holding guns. "Most of the dead bodies are badly mutilated, you cannot recognise anything... It's an awful scene," he said. "But what the hell, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, can you? We're doing it all for them. They'll thank us for it later, the ones who aren't dead, anyway." Both sides earlier denied they had signed a formal truce. "Our officials asked us to stop fighting and said any Islamic courts' militiaman who fails to heed the call will be held accountable for his actions," Mohammad said. "That means they'll chop a body part or two off in the grand Islamic manner. Nobody wants that. The girlies ignore you when you're called stumpy." Hussein Gutale Rage, spokesman for the warlords' alliance, said: "It's all lies. We have not agreed anything with them. They stopped shooting at us and that's why there is calm now. We think they might all be dead now, regardless of what they tell you. If not, soon's we hijack a coupla ammunition ships, we're ready to go again. We'll murderlize 'em! Hrowf!" |