Ethiopian Troops Begin to Pull out of Somalia

Ethiopian military occupation of Somalia will end the next few days as a spokesman for Meles Zenawi said the troops' withdrawal will take several days.

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ethiopian military forces have begun pulling out as a convoy of about 30 Ethiopian military vehicles carrying troops and weapons vacated the Capital city, Mogadishu.

The troops helped the Somalia Transitional Federal Government fend off Islamic insurgents without much success. Even today as the Ethiopians started vacating Mogadishu, a roadside bomb killed 2 of the Ethiopian soldiers who then retaliated by killing nearby civilians by blindly opening fire.

"The withdrawal of our troops from Somalia has entered the implementation phase," Bereket Simon, special adviser to the Ethiopian premier, told Reuters news agency.
"The withdrawal is not an event that can be completed within a day. It will be finalised as quickly as possible.", said Zenawi's spokesman.

For the past two years as occupiers, Ethiopian forces took many casualties and suffered a steady drain on its resources as they fought Islamic revolutionists.

In the name of protecting the so called puppet TFG weak government, the Tigreans are said to committed war crimes by human rights organizations.

About 3,400 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers from the African Union in Somalia are taking up positions vacated by the Ethiopians. So far, Islamic Insurgents conducted several attacks against TFG and AU forces positions in the past week alone.