Sat Jan 22, 2005 09:08 AM ET
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Somalia's government vowed on Saturday to bring to justice militiamen who exhumed hundreds of skeletons from an Italian colonial-era cemetery and dumped them near Mogadishu's airport.
Witnesses said the bones, mostly of former Italian colonial officials and soldiers, were dug up over five days this week, outraging the Horn of Africa nation's former colonial power.
"We condemn in the strongest terms this abhorrent, criminal and inhumane act," Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi told a news conference in neighboring Kenya.
"We assure the Italian government and its people that this will not go unpunished and these criminal perpetrators will be brought to justice."
The motive for the mass exhumation, by gunmen allied with the Muslim clerics who rule parts of Mogadishu by Islamic law, remains unclear.
Analysts have speculated that the exhumations were in effect a message of opposition to Gedi's government, which enjoys warm relations with Rome and is disliked by Muslim militants who control the city's Islamic courts.
Asked for comment, Gedi dismissed any political connection to the incident and said merely the gunmen were opportunists.
Gedi's transitional government has yet to return from Kenya, where it has remained because of security fears at home since its gradual formation at peace talks in recent months.
Gedi has said he plans to start relocating his administration to Mogadishu in the next two or three weeks.
President Abdullahi Yusuf, Nairobi-based since he was elected at Somali peace talks on Oct 10, visited an Italian war memorial church in central Kenya on Friday to express his condemnation.
Yusuf told the Italian news agency ANSA: "It was necessary to immediately show our outrage at this barbaric act committed in Mogadishu which is not only anti-Islamic but represents an attack on our good friend Italy."
Dozens of fractious militias have been the de facto rulers of Somalia since 1991, when a militia coalition ousted military dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and ushered in an era of anarchy.
Gunmen told residents near the cemetery in south Mogadishu that the courts ordered them to clear the site of non-Islamic elements, witnesses said.
But a number of high-ranking court clerics have denied that, and residents and other Muslim religious leaders condemned the exhumations as out of keeping with their faith.
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