By Katie Nguyen
NAIROBI (Reuters) - All parties in Somalia's conflict havecarried out rights abuses including executions, rape andtorture, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, adding therewere reports Ethiopian soldiers had slit civilians' throats.
Mogadishu's entire population is scarred from witnessing orsuffering such abuses, as well as enforced disappearances andbeatings, it said in its 32-page report.
Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies havebeen battling Islamist-led insurgents since early last year.
Yet the real scale of the rights crisis remained unknownbecause international aid agencies were under pressure not toexpose the abuses they witnessed, Amnesty said, and localjournalists were often silenced by threats.
The interim government has largely failed to impose itsauthority on the Horn of Africa country of 8 million people,torn apart by inter-clan violence and vulnerable to cycles ofdrought, flooding and now skyrocketing food prices.
The Ethiopian and Somali governments have frequently deniedcommitting rights abuses in their fight against what they callal Qaeda-backed terrorists. Prime Minister Nur Hassan Husseinhas said government troops have the right to defend themselves.
However, Somali lawmaker Awad Ahmed Ashareh said theEthiopian soldiers should be replaced.
"We are requesting that the international community givesan order for Ethiopia to leave and bring other forces," he toldReuters at the launch of Amnesty's report in Nairobi.
Ashareh called for an international court to be establishedto prosecute human rights abuses in Somalia.
Many Somalis living in southern and central areas say lifeis worse now than when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre wasoverthrown by warlords in 1991, plunging the country intolawlessness. Up to 1 million Somalis are refugees in their ownland, while an estimated 6,500 civilians were killed last year.
Amnesty said since late 2007 it had received an increase inreports of violations against civilians by Ethiopian forces whohelped the government oust Islamist leaders at the end of 2006.
"SLAUGHTERED LIKE GOATS"
Among the most common were allegations of gang rape andreports of civilians being slaughtered like goats -- theirthroats slit -- and left lying in the street or their homesbecause sniper fire made it too dangerous to collect thebodies.
Last month, Amnesty said Ethiopian troops killed 21 peoplein Mogadishu's Al Hidaaya district -- seven of the victims hadtheir throats cut. Ethiopia dismissed the report as lies,saying its soldiers had never been involved in such incidents.
One person told Amnesty of a report that Ethiopian soldiershad slit the throat of a young child in front of the mother.
In another account, a witness only named as Ceebla'a saidshe saw Ethiopian soldiers rounding up three men whose bodieswere found in the street the next morning.
One had been strangled with electrical wire, another hadhis throat cut, while the third one had been chained ankle towrist, his testicles smashed.
Haboon, aged 56, told Amnesty Ethiopian troops raped aneighbour's 17-year-old daughter in mid-2007. She said when thegirl's two younger brothers tried to defend her, Ethiopiansoldiers beat them and gouged out their eyes with a bayonet.She said she did not know what happened to them next.
"Even their mother didn't wait to see, she just fled,"Amnesty said.
It said there was a marked increase in executions ofcivilians by Ethiopian troops in the last two months of 2007.The rise appeared, in part, to have been in retaliation for anambush of Ethiopia soldiers in early November in which thebodies of several Ethiopians were dragged through the streets.
The report quoted witnesses who accused the Islamist alShabaab militia of indiscriminate attacks on civilians andthreatening journalists.
(Additional reporting by Hereward Holland; editing byAndrew Dobbie)
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