SOMALIA: Mortar fire kills 5 and injures scores others in Mogadishu violence

Record ID: 352371

  • Title: SOMALIA: Mortar fire kills 5 and injures scores others in Mogadishu violence
  • Date: 2nd February 2007
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Somali) EYEWITNESS, MUHIBO SUBEIR SAYING: "After last night's attack, I was injured together with my child, not forgetting my son who got killed by the mortar. We can't sleep in our houses as we are worried about mortar attacks."
  • Embargoed: 17th February 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Somalia
  • Country: Somalia
  • Reuters ID: LVA1TGDWZ9YQWKUZTVSD57LSV3Z5
  • Story Text: Five civilians were killed in the latest guerrilla-style strikes on Ethiopian military and Somali government positions in Mogadishu, witnesses said on Friday (February 2).
    Resident Adey Malim Nur confirmed both his sons were killed in mortar attacks late on Thursday (February 1). Three others were previously known to have died from the attack near the presidential palace.
    "All this people who are firing mortars are the same, be it the government or the Ethiopians, they only think of fighting," said Mogadishu Resident, Hassan Sahal Adar.
    The Somali government said those behind the attack were probably militants from an Islamist movement ousted from Mogadishu after a six-month rule of most of south Somalia.
    Government forces backed by Ethiopia's military routed the Islamists in a two-week campaign in December.
    Somali Information Minister Al Ahmed Jama told Reuters that an investigation was underway.
    During Thursday's (February 1) assault, mortar bombs and rockets struck parts of the sea port, near the Villa Somalia palace where President Abdullahi Yusuf stays, and hit homes nearby.
    It was the latest in a string of assassinations and strikes, including on Ethiopian military convoys and bases, and a mortar attack on Villa Somalia, since the war at the New Year.
    Most casualties have been civilians.
    The violence has underlined the challenges facing Yusuf's government in its efforts to establish central rule in Somalia for the first time since 1991 when the ouster of a dictator turned the Horn of Africa nation into a byword for anarchy.
    The African Union (AU) is struggling to build a peacekeeping force for Somalia to fill a security vacuum after Ethiopian troops leave. But many African nations are nervous about sending soldiers to one of the world's most dangerous countries.
    Since their defeat, the Islamists have scattered to southern Somalia but vowed a long guerrilla war.
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