On May 1st, the US assassinated Aden Hashi Eyrow, one of senior leaders of Somalia’s Islamist movement, in an air strike that killed at least 10 other people.

Somalia has a United Nations-backed transitional government that had little local legitimacy and controlled only one town at the time of the Ethiopian invasion. The transitional government has lost almost all support by Somalis following its continued support for the Ethiopian occupation, even after several well documented atrocities. Amnesty International has accused Ethiopian soldiers of killing 21 people, including an imam and several Islamic scholars, at a Mogadishu mosque and said seven of the victims had their throats slit. According to eye-witnesses, the eleven killed inside the mosque were unarmed civilians taking no active part in hostilities. Amnesty International has documented a pattern of these ‘throat-slitting’ executions, which often occur in security sweeps after attacks on Ethiopian forces in Somalia. Amnesty International also expressed concern that approximately 41 children, estimated to range from 9 to 18 years of age, were taken by the Ethiopian military from the Al Hidya mosque where they were attending religious classes.

Asha Haji Ilmi, head of Save Somali Women and Children, a Mogadishu-based NGO, reports that the situation had never been this bad in 17 years of civil war, and that the transitional government is making the humanitarian situation worse by waging an economic war in Mogadishu. “The destruction and looting of Bakara market and the printing of fake currency has led to hyperinflation,” seriously affecting the population’s ability to cope, she said.

The upsurge in violence comes as the country is on the brink of a severe drought. The number of people in need of assistance in Somalia has increased to 2.6 million people (35% of the total population), an increase of more than 40% since January 2008. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs-Somalia, warns that “if things do not improve within the coming weeks, and it is not likely, then we will be confronted with the images of 1991-1992,” when hundreds of thousands of Somalis died through drought and violence.

In response to the US assassination of Eyrow, Ahmed Samatar, the Somali born dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College told PBS's News Hour that the death of the Islamic leader will likely increase resistance to Ethiopia: "this is what you can hear from the Somali people around both inside and outside of the country. And that is target assassinations, in the final analysis, might be successful in taking out the individual or the individuals that one is hunting for, but the consequences of that is to make people who are now in the middle and who really are peaceful people and who are not interested in violence to be increasingly pushed to become more militant and, therefore, dare to take violence as an instrument to liberate their country from the invasion of the Ethiopians and this transitional government, which the Ethiopians have imposed on the Somali people."

Thousands of Somalis Protest Deadly U.S. Air Strike | PDF | Thousands riot in Somali capital | Somalis protest against US strike | US confirms Somali missile strike | Somalia Situation Report | Scores dead as Ethiopian troops push further into Mogadishu | 'Wash Post' Backs Invasion and 'Endless' Occupation Over Air Strikes | Anarchy in Somalia

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