SOMALIA: Street battles rage for a sixth day, 133 dead

Record ID: 375719

  • Title: SOMALIA: Street battles rage for a sixth day, 133 dead
  • Date: 13th May 2006
  • Summary: WIDE SHOT MOGADISHU RESIDENTS LEAVING WITH THEIR BELONGINGS (6 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 28th May 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Somalia
  • Country: Somalia
  • Topics: War / Fighting,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA6XFX4KOQPQE16C0AZKLWAG9UV
  • Story Text: Hundreds of terrified people are fleeing pitched battles in the Somali capital as Islamic fighters and warlord militias fight for control of Mogadishu.
    As the battle went into its sixth day on Friday (May 12, 2006), residents said at least 12 more people had died overnight and into Friday, pushing the death toll to at least 133.
    Close-quarter street battles spread beyond Mogadishu's battered northern shanty town of Siisii into the neighbouring district of Yaqshid, in the worst violence in the lawless capital for more than a decade.
    Warlord spokesman Hussein Gutale Rage said the death toll had reached 150 but this could not be immediately verified.
    Armed with basic possessions, many Mogadishu inhabitants fled to safer parts of the city and looters ransacked empty houses, undeterred by a barrage from artillery, mortars and anti-aircraft missiles.
    Some 600 civilians are believed trapped by the fighting and hundreds more have been wounded in the clashes. Shells have regularly hit houses, killing women and children. Hospitals are struggling to cope with the flood of patients.
    "We have received a lot of patients with weapons wounds, some of them with explosion injuries, from the last five days; from the clashes in Mogadishu we have received 91 patients who were admitted in the hospital, 13 of them were children, two of those 13 children have died in the hospital because of severe injuries. We also received 20 female patients who were injured in the fighting. Those people are mostly severely injured and are hospitalised," Sheiahkhdon Salad, the doctor in charge of Mogadishu's Medina hospital told Reuters.
    The latest Mogadishu street battles were the third round this year between gunmen allied to Islamic courts and militia from a self-styled anti-terrorist alliance of powerful warlords.
    Many residents say the Islamic courts, which have created a semblance of order in the lawless city of 1 million by providing justice under sharia law, are fighting to repel a determined warlord offensive to take areas under their control.
    Analysts view the fighting in the failed Horn of Africa state as a proxy battle between al Qaeda and Washington, which is widely believed to be funding the warlords.
    Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf accuses Washington of backing the warlords' "Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism".
    Washington has long viewed Somalia, without an effective central government since the 1991 ousting of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, as a terrorist haven.
    The fighting in Mogadishu shows how little control Somalia's fledging government -- the 14th attempt to restore rule in 15 years -- has over the nation of 10 million.
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