May 2, 2003	Friday	Safar 29, 1424

MOGADISHU: Freelance gunmen are making life in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu more frightening than ever, forcing businesses, dignitaries and foreign residents to hire more armed men for protection against extortion and kidnappings.

For years, the streets of Mogadishu have bristled with deadly hardware ranging from sidearms, through sub-machine guns to “technicals”: modified anti-aircraft artillery or heavy machine guns mounted in the wells of pick-up trucks.

Foreign aid workers, visiting journalists and local dignitaries rarely move in the city without an escort of one or two technicals.

There is no government to speak of in Somalia since the ouster of President Mohammed Siad Bare in 1991.

Many consider the Transitional National Government (TNG), which controls pockets of the capital and little else, as just one of the many, mostly clan-based, armed groups vying for power and control across the country.

Wadnaha, one of Mogadishu’s main roads, is a particularly dangerous spot, with at least four permanent roadblocks and occasional barriers, which threaten the lives of pedestrians and travellers in buses or trucks.

On Tuesday, unidentified gunmen abducted an Islamic Court judge in north Mogadishu’s Sinai enclave.

“The hired armed abductors, who were driving a small Toyota car, snatched the judge from his house in north Mogadishu, but one of the gunmen later fell off a pickup truck and was captured by neighbours,” said one witness, Ibrahim Ahmed Jumale.

“No one is safe from attacks by gunmen, whose daily lives are based on income generated by violence,” said Asha Idris, who witnessed the killing of two people at Hawlwadag junction of the Wadnaha Avenue on Monday.

She said the killers shot at rival gunmen before turning and shooting dead the two men.

TNG police in Mogadishu are unable to cope with the growing violence as some of its instigators are affiliated to warlords who have refused to recognize the regime.

The easiest targets for kidnapping are foreigners, people who hail from unarmed minority clans and business people.—AFP