Amnesty says civilians targeted in Somalia conflict

All parties in Somalia's conflict have carried out rights abuses including executions, rape and torture, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, adding there were reports Ethiopian soldiers had slit civilians' throats.

Mogadishu's entire population is scarred from witnessing or suffering such abuses, as well as enforced disappearances and beatings, it said in its 32-page report.

Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies have been battling Islamist-led insurgents since early last year.

Yet the real scale of the rights crisis remained unknown because international aid agencies were under pressure not to expose the abuses they witnessed, Amnesty said, and local journalists were often silenced by threats.

The interim government has largely failed to impose its authority on the Horn of Africa country of 8 million people, torn apart by inter-clan violence and vulnerable to cycles of drought, flooding and now skyrocketing food prices.

The Ethiopian and Somali governments have frequently denied committing rights abuses in their fight against what they call al Qaeda-backed terrorists. Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein has said government troops have the right to defend themselves.

However, Somali lawmaker Awad Ahmed Ashareh said the Ethiopian soldiers should be replaced.

"We are requesting that the international community gives an order for Ethiopia to leave and bring other forces," he told Reuters at the launch of Amnesty's report in Nairobi.

Ashareh called for an international court to be established to prosecute human rights abuses in Somalia.

Many Somalis living in southern and central areas say life is worse now than when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords in 1991, plunging the country into lawlessness. Up to 1 million Somalis are refugees in their own land, while an estimated 6,500 civilians were killed last year.

Amnesty said since late 2007 it had received an increase in reports of violations against civilians by Ethiopian forces who helped the government oust Islamist leaders at the end of 2006.

"SLAUGHTERED LIKE GOATS"

Among the most common were allegations of gang rape and reports of civilians being slaughtered like goats - their throats slit - and left lying in the street or their homes because sniper fire made it too dangerous to collect the bodies.

Last month, Amnesty said Ethiopian troops killed 21 people in Mogadishu's Al Hidaaya district - seven of the victims had their throats cut. Ethiopia dismissed the report as lies, saying its soldiers had never been involved in such incidents.

One person told Amnesty of a report that Ethiopian soldiers had slit the throat of a young child in front of the mother.

In another account, a witness only named as Ceebla'a said she saw Ethiopian soldiers rounding up three men whose bodies were found in the street the next morning.

One had been strangled with electrical wire, another had his throat cut, while the third one had been chained ankle to wrist, his testicles smashed.

Haboon, aged 56, told Amnesty Ethiopian troops raped a neighbour's 17-year-old daughter in mid-2007. She said when the girl's two younger brothers tried to defend her, Ethiopian soldiers beat them and gouged out their eyes with a bayonet. She said she did not know what happened to them next.

"Even their mother didn't wait to see, she just fled," Amnesty said.

It said there was a marked increase in executions of civilians by Ethiopian troops in the last two months of 2007. The rise appeared, in part, to have been in retaliation for an ambush of Ethiopia soldiers in early November in which the bodies of several Ethiopians were dragged through the streets.

The report quoted witnesses who accused the Islamist al Shabaab militia of indiscriminate attacks on civilians and threatening journalists.