World ignoring Somalia war crimes: rights group

By Andrew Cawthorne

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Mogadishu residents have suffered war crimes by Ethiopian troops, Somali government soldiers and Islamist insurgents in a year of hell "shamefully" ignored by the world, Human Rights Watch charged on Monday.

The group said Ethiopia's army had indiscriminately bombarded highly populated areas, targeted and looted hospitals, and summarily executed civilians.

Somali government forces fighting alongside the Ethiopians failed to warn civilians in combat zones, looted property, impeded aid, and mistreated dozens of detainees, it added.

Islamist-led insurgents had also put civilians at risk by deploying among them, and had committed crimes including burning foes alive, the New York-based rights watchdog said.

"The warring parties have all shown criminal disregard for the well-being of the civilian population of Mogadishu," the group's executive director Ken Roth said in a report titled "Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu."

"The illegal methods of warfare used by all the warring parties ... (has had a) catastrophic toll on civilians."

The study -- focusing on battles in Mogadishu since Ethiopian-Somali troops ousted militant Islamists at the end of 2006 -- said estimates of civilian deaths ranged from 400 to more than 1,300 in the two worst bouts of fighting.

Another 400,000 civilians had fled the capital.

The Ethiopian and Somali governments dispute those figures and deny rights abuses. Addis Ababa said the report was propaganda for Islamist radicals that distorted Ethiopia's beneficial role in supporting Somalia's interim government.

"As usual, Human Rights Watch is engaged in its now well-known fabrication, and in misinforming the world in unsubstantiated fairy-tales," Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told Reuters.

Somalia's government called the HRW charges "baseless". Spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon said they were based on "wrong impressions of the reality on the ground" from U.N. bodies.

The government's only goal was "to restore sanity" not "massacre its own people," he said.

DARFUR TAKES LIMELIGHT

Human Rights Watch had harsh words, too, for the world's attitude to Somalia. "The U.N. Security Council's indifference to this crisis has only added to the tragedy," Roth said.

He added: "It is a conflict that has been marked by numerous violations of international humanitarian law that have been met with a shameful silence... on the part of key foreign governments and international institutions."