JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A surprise cease-fire agreement between Somalia’s central government and the armed opposition was greeted with more rocket and machine- gun fire in the capital of Mogadishu on Tuesday even as the residents of that beleaguered city hoped that the deal might at last bring stability to Africa’s most war-devastated nation.
“The people are very jubilant,” Mogadishu schoolteacher Abdisirack Noriftin said.
As he spoke, a government military base in the north of the metropolis was under heavy attack, presumably by extremist Islamic rebels called Shabab who have vowed never to parley and to battle Somalia’s federal authorities to the death.
The text of the agreement states that a cessation of hostilities will take effect in 30 days and will last for three months, when it can be extended.
It represents a concession by the embattled government, analysts say, because it stipulates for the first time that thousands of Ethiopian troops now occupying Somalia must withdraw from the country and links their exit to the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping forces.
