Hardline Islamist leaders rejected a UN-brokered peace pact signed by the Somali government and some opposition figures, and vowed on Tuesday that war would continue. “We don't see that as a peace deal, we see it as a trap,” Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told Reuters by phone from Eritrea. “We encourage the insurgents and the Somali people not to be tired of combating the enemy.” Moments after an Islamist leader rubbished the truce deal between rival factions in Djibouti, insurgents attacked a Mogadishu police station. Witnesses said insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns raided the station in the northern Karan district, allowing prisoners to run free, the latest in a series of attacks in the seaside capital. “The bodies of two dead policemen could be seen strewn across the street near the station while prisoners were running away after being released',” said a grocer. The violence came a day after Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein and Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) chief Sheikh Sharif Ahmed signed agreements at UN-sponsored talks in Djibouti, including a three-month truce which is to come into force within a month. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, an influential cleric, has rejected the deal. The sheikh, accused of links to Al-Qaeda by the United States, argued it failed to set a clear deadline for the withdrawal from Somalia of Ethiopian troops. “I do not believe that the outcome of this conference will have any impact on the resistance in Somalia. We shall continue fighting until we liberate our country from the enemies of Allah,” Aweys told Mogadishu-based Shabelle radio.
