Witnesses said Tuesday that Ethiopian troops have crossed the border into war-ravaged Somalia and appear to be stationing themselves in a town at a strategic crossroads. A witness said he saw 12 military vehicles, but the number of troops was not clear, nor was it clear if they were a vanguard of a larger force or an attempt to protect the porous border from Somalia's Islamist insurgents. Witnesses said they saw Ethiopian troops in the Somali town of Kalabeyr, 22 kilometers from the Ethiopian border and 18 kilometers north of Belet Weyne, the provincial capital of Somalia's Hiran region. Kalabeyr lies at a strategic junction of a road that links southern, central and northern Somalia to the Ethiopian border.
Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Wahde Belay, however, said Tuesday's reports were untrue. Somali Information Minister Farhan Ali Mahmoud would not comment on the reports.
There have been sporadic reports of Ethiopian troops crossing into Somalia since early this year when Ethiopia pulled out the forces it had sent there in 2006 to restore the UN-backed government to power in the capital, Mogadishu.