SOMALIA: Two people killed and scores injured as mortar attacks continue in Mogadishu.

Record ID: 352804

  • Title: SOMALIA: Two people killed and scores injured as mortar attacks continue in Mogadishu.
  • Date: 9th February 2007
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF DESTROYED HOUSES
  • Embargoed: 24th February 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Somalia
  • Country: Somalia
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2PGJAUW336XMGCIK2C6HXJ9S8
  • Story Text: Two people were killed and scores injured in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Wednesday. The city came under further mortar attacks on Thursday. Unknown assailants fired mortar bombs, killing two people and wounding eight more in Somalia's beleagured capital on Wednesday (February 7), .
    "We were here last night when the mortar hit our house first. Three people were injured - a three-year-old boy died instantly, and his 16-year-old aunt died in the hospital," said resident Fu'ad Muhyidin.
    Government officials blame remnants of the Islamist movement, some of whom have vowed holy war.
    In further atacks, assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade in Mogadishu on Thursday (February 8), wounding four people in a pick-up truck in the latest guerrilla-style attack in post-war Somalia.
    The latest incident took place in a busy area near Mogadishu's Tarbuunka square, where an Ethiopian vehicle had just passed.
    A wave of such strikes since Islamists were ousted from Mogadishu at the New Year have underscored the massive challenge facing President Abdullahi Yusuf's government to tame one of the world's most anarchic cities.
    Since defeating the Islamists, who had controlled most of south Somalia since June, the government and its Ethiopian allies have been targeted with mortars, grenades, gunfire and assassination attempts on a near-daily basis.
    But instability in Mogadishu could also be due to tensions between warlords and clans in a city, which has been a byword for violence since the ousting of a dictator in 1991.
    The latest attacks came on the eve of a meeting of African and Western diplomats in Dar es Salaam on Friday (February 9).
    The International Contact Group on Somalia is expected to discuss reconciliation efforts and the sending of peacekeepers to the Horn of Africa nation, following a brief war between the Ethiopian-backed Somali government and rival Islamists.
    ar/afr/jrc
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