Hiiraan Online report (in Somali)

Shaykh Hasan “Turki” Abdullahi Hirsi, a senior leader of the Union of Islamic Courts, has called on the Somali people to get ready to fight UN troops being planned for Somalia.

Speaking to the Mogadishu media on the VHF radio, Shaykh Hasan Turki said the end is nearing for Ethiopian troops in Somalia, and the Somali people were required to fight UN troops that are coming. “The UN works in the service of the US. Everybody knows that the US is the enemy of Islam. Therefore, I urge the Somali people to fight the enemy of Islam and anyone helping them,” Shaykh Hasan Turki said.

Asked how he saw the UN-brokered reconciliation talks between the federal government and the opposition, Shaykh Hasan Turki declared that “now is not the time for talks. Now is the time to liberate Somalia from the enemy.”

Asked to give his take on the fact that the US has been hunting him and whether he was worried being hit by a US missile strike. Shaykh Hasan Turki said that if the US was looking for him, he was happy about it. He pointed out that death was inevitable and that a person’s time to die was predetermined.

Finally, asked to give the location he was speaking to the Mogadishu media from, Shaykh Hasan Turki simply said that he was under one of Somalia’s acacia trees.