NAIROBI, Kenya — A Somali official appealed for urgent help Wednesday as residents reported that the key port city of Merka had fallen to Islamist insurgents.

Hundreds of fighters rolled into the port in heavily armed pickup trucks, meeting no resistance because government-allied militias had fled the night before, according to residents. Merka is only 60 miles south of Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-pocked capital, and Somali officials said the Islamists were now planning to lay siege to Mogadishu. More on Insurgents Seize Port City in Somalia

Senior editor of Awramba Times Ato Fitsum Mammo has informed Ethopian Review that the newspaper’s publisher Ato Dawit Kebede and deputy editor Ato Wondyirad DebreTsion were ordered to report to Addis Ababa Police Commission this morning.

Evidently, Ethiopia (Woyanne regime) is unable to feed her own people and thus could not feasibly sustain this occupation without Washington ’s financial, political and technical support. In fiscal year 2007, U.S. awarded the Ethiopian regime approximately $300 million dollars in a non-humanitarian aid, and it was supposed to award double that amount in fiscal year 2008 in order to “fight against Islamists in neighboring Somalia ”. Be as it may, today, Ethiopia is on a political slippery slope that unless it takes drastic measures (and soon) it can become the next epicenter of violence in the Horn of Africa.