Mogadishu - street bombs as Somali Governemnt is in disarray - Transport plane with tons of quat on board crashes on landing approach today.

Nur al Cubicle (Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - Our Ally Ethiopia, the War Criminal) brings us a report from Corriere della Sera reporter Massimo Alberizzi in Mogadishu.


Massimo is a well known journo on the Eritrea beat and has been advising the UN Security Council into the investigation of arms trafficking of arms in the Horn of Africa.

He was kidnapped by the Islamic Courts in December 2006 but was released after 2 days .Good article in Corriere translated into English by Giles Watson about the kidnap racket in Somalia by
him. "Ten thousand dollars gets you a phone call from the hostages and 100,000 dollars buys a photo taken by the abductors. A million dollars – about 600,000 euros – will free them. Everyone is peddling information, none of it certain."


On Sunday morning 3rd August at 8:30 terrorists struck a group of 30 women hired to remove the garbage from the main avenue, Maka Al Mukarama, near the Hotel Ambassador. Yussuf Hannan, a stringer for the Corriere della Sera, ran to the scene ""It was horrible. At least 25 women [mothers] between the ages of 29 and 40 were torn to pieces by the blast,"

Maka Al Mukarama, has been heavily guarded because the US intelligence people are billeted in the Hotel Ambasador - which heavily guarded by Ethiopian forces who were probably the target for the bomb.

By collecting the rubbish the women are actually being employed effectively as human minesweepers - the women were employed as part of an NGO project sponsored by ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) International - based in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA) that provides food (wheat and oil) for cleaning the trash mointains that have grown for 15 years and can easily be used to camouflage bombs.

Voice of America (VOA) say that witnesses counted 15 bodies at the scene, while five other people died after being taken to Mogadishu's Medina Hospital. More than 40 others were injured.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the bomb which was placed between Ambassador hotel and the Haji Pasto Garage in the southern part of the city where most Ethiopian soldiers are stationed.

Dr. Dahir Mhoamoud Mohamed, deputy director of Medina Hospital said ,'We have admitted so far 50 shrapnel-wounded people, mostly old aged women and children." 5 were dead and the rest suffered seriously injured.

Apparently there was a similar incident last year when five women municipal street sweepers were killed in a blast in the southern part of Mogadishu by a bomb hidden in a pile of garbage.

In a separate incident, Islamist insurgents attacked Ethiopian forces in Mogadishu's Towfiq neighborhood early today. Witnesses say at least three soldiers were killed.

Ethiopian troops are supporting the Somali transitional government in its fight against the Islamist insurgency. There is however much jockeying for power and the deadly bomb attack came as the political crisis in Somalia deepened over the weekend with 11 ministers of the transitional federal government resigning in protest against Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein for sacking mayor Habeeb without consulting the cabinet. VOA

The visit therefore of ex mayor Mohamed Omar Habeeb to the hospital to visit the victims was of some significance - he said that those behind the bomb were enemies of peace. No shit Sherlock.

Twin Turbo Prop AT 72-500 with cargo of quat from Kenya crashes into radio antenna on approach at Mogadishu (12 hours ago)

A Fly 540 (49% ownd by Lonrho) ATR 72-500 plane yesterday crashed near Mogadishu Airport, Somalia. The Italian / French Fokker ATR 72-500 is certified to operate on unpaved runways through installation of a kit to ensure landing gear and lower fuselage protection.can carry up to 74 passengers in a four abreast, centre-aisle configuration. The standard configuration includes two cargo compartments.

The flight had three crew members on board when it went down in the morning - now reported dead. The airplane was seen approaching the airport, 50km from Mogadishu, twice and going around before colliding with a telecommunication antenna owned by "Nationlink Telecom" about 2km from the airport, airport officials reported. A lot of humidity was around the airport, impairing visibility.

Airstrip K50: Coordinates: N 01°59'55.62" E44°58'53.04 - see Google Earth.

The aircraft was carrying 5.4 tonnes of khat, from Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Nairobi, local police reported.

Previous crash of this type ..

On August 6, 2005, a Tuninter ATR 72 en route from Bari, Italy, to Djerba, Tunisia, ditched into the Mediterranean Sea about 18 miles from the city of Palermo. Sixteen of the 39 people on board died. This was thought to be due to fuel starvation - due perhaps to installing the wrong fuel indicators.

One ponders that even in this most desperate war, someone somewhere is organising the trade in quat - 5.4 tonnes which must be (say) 16 pallets. Distribution is urgent because the halucinogenic properties of the drug die off after 36 - 48 hours. Street price in Manchester is about £8 for 1/2 kilo which is a days supply.

Quat (qat, kwat) is not on the list of substances controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 in the UK, but it is illegal in many countries including most European nations and the US. Meanhwile beggars are in the streets and women are paid in oil and wheat to clean the steets and act as "minesweepers".

Learn more about quat here its use in the UK and possible connection with the 21/7 London Transport bombers.

.. and finally Nur gets angry ..."In any case, the US-sponsored Ethiopian occupation of Somalia is going to hell. I have no kind words for Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, who was the No. 1 cheerleader for this bloody mess. I hope her career will forever bear this stain.

Jendayi was personally selected for her post by Condi Rice , who has had to interrupt her holidays to worry her tiny little head about Georgia. Mr Mugabe doesn't like Jandayi either , after he wasn't voted in on the first round of the elections in Zim , and she publicly criticised him , he said ..."You saw that little American girl [Frazer] trotting around the globe like a prostitute..." CNN Mugabe labels U.S. diplomat a 'prostitute'