More Summer Fun in Somalia

A couple of updates from the world's least organized "state":

Somali gangs-er- "factions" kill each other over who gets to escort an aid convoy, as reported here:

Five people were killed at the weekend and several others seriously injured after rival militia clashed along the Kenya/Somalia border.

Fighting erupted at the Somalia border town of Dobley after the two groups differed over a contract to protect convoys of relief supply shipments to the southern part of the troubled nation.

Fighting ensued and spilled over to the common border, where a defeated faction had retreated to regroup before staging a surprise dawn raid on Sunday, leaving at least 14 people with bullet wounds.
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Witnesses said forces allied to the Somalia Patriotic Movement (SPM) waylaid a column of trucks ferrying humanitarian supplies after World Food Programme (WFP) reportedly awarded a rival faction a security contract to escort the shipments.

The Arican Union votes to send a belated "peace" mission to Somalia, but the Union of Islamic Courts, which claims to be in charge, rejects the idea, as reported here:

The African Union (AU) upon the conclusion of its leaders' summit last Sunday, unanimously adopted a resolution to deploy a peace mission in Somalia.

The militant Islamist group in Mogadishu however has dismissed the idea protesting that no foreign troops would be allowed into the country.
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The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) which took control of Mogadishu and some other parts of Somalia however, had priorly warned the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), that they will terminate any negotiation if foreign peace keeping troops were allowed into Somalia.

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the Mogadishu Islamic Courts chairman, said: "The government should stop the request of foreign troops in order for internal discussion with us to continue," Ahmed told reporters, "Negotiations with the government are not possible at this time because parliament could approve foreign troops."

No much in the way of a surprise in any of that.