Troops in Somalia on Alert; Reward Offered for Warlord

Jittery U.N. forces were on alert Saturday after stepping up their manhunt for fugitive warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and coming under attack in the harbor.

Three French soldiers were wounded by gunfire as they guarded a freight ship and were evacuated for emergency surgery. Their condition was not known.

About 13,000 troops in Mogadishu were ordered to wear flak jackets from dusk to lights-out, said Maj. LeAnn Swieczkowski, spokeswoman for the multinational peacekeeping force.

Italian and Pakistani troops distributed posters and leaflets offering a $25,000 reward for information on the whereabouts of, or to anyone who turns in, Aidid. It was the first time U.N. forces have put a price on Aidid’s head since U.N. special envoy Jonathan Howe, a retired American admiral, ordered his arrest in mid-June and a subsequent aerial bombardment of his strongholds.

U.N. helicopters dropped 80,000 wanted posters last month but did not say how much would be paid for the capture of the man the United Nations accuses of a June 5 attack that killed 24 Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers. Aidid fled after the United Nations bombed his headquarters and ordered his arrest.

Four Norwegian soldiers were wounded in a mortar attack on U.N. headquarters on Friday night.

It was thought to be the first time that gunmen harassing the United Nations since it clamped down on Aidid had successfully attacked the U.N. compound where hundreds of staff are barricaded.

Snipers have fired on U.N. soldiers guarding the compound nightly for the past month, but gunmen had failed to strike inside the compound housing the United Nations’ Operation in Somalia, known as UNOSOM.

The attack happened in the early evening as hundreds of U.N. military and civilian personnel were eating dinner in the American Embassy compound, where the United Nations is headquartered.

All U.N. staff and several thousand soldiers moved to the compound, which includes both the U.S. Embassy and a sprawling defunct university complex, after Mogadishu slid back into violence last month with the attack on the Pakistani troops.

Hussein Dimbil, who claimed to be a spokesman for Aidid, said Saturday: “I ask Adm. Howe to stop the bombing and the fighting. We want dialogue.”

He said that Aidid, in a meeting in south Mogadishu, denied ordering attacks against U.N. troops.