SOMALIA: More deaths in Mogadishu as latest round of battles kill more than 30, dozens more injured

Record ID: 741217

  • Title: SOMALIA: More deaths in Mogadishu as latest round of battles kill more than 30, dozens more injured
  • Date: 21st June 2008
  • Summary: WOMEN WASHING
  • Embargoed: 6th July 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Somalia
  • Country: Somalia
  • Topics: Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA3Z8UJFL1M8KAPPQ1H7S4717P4
  • Story Text: About a dozen people are killed in Mogadishu after fierce artillery battles between Islamist rebels and Somali forces backed by their Ethiopian allies.
    Bodies lay in Mogadishu streets on Friday (June 20) after the latest fighting between Islamist rebels and allied Somali-Ethiopian forces pushed the death toll to 38 since a peace deal was signed in Djibouti last week.
    The June 10 agreement between Somalia's interim government and some opposition figures was rejected outright by hardline Islamists in exile and the insurgents on the ground, and experts had warned it was likely to have little impact on the violence.
    Residents said the heaviest fighting this week broke out on Thursday along Industrial Road in the north of the capital, where both sides traded artillery barrages and machine-gun fire.

    "No one was there because I had fled to another house when the mortar hit but three of my neighbours were killed and two others were wounded," said Mohamed Abdi Yusuf.
    At least 10 people were killed, they said, including five children.
    Dozens more civilians were wounded.
    Locals said four other children died when an artillery strike hit a home in the Gubta neighbourhood. Elsewhere, they said the bodies of three unidentified men lay in the road.

    "This is my uncle's house ten people were wounded and four others died, another six are admitted in Madina hospital unconscious," said one female resident who declined to give her name.
    A rebel spokesman, Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow, said two of their fighters had been killed and three wounded.
    Government officials could not be reached for comment.
    In separate violence overnight in northern Somalia, police said a roadside bomb killed a hotel owner in Galkayo town. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.
    Islamist hard-liners who opposed the U.N.-led Djibouti talks have refused to meet the Western-backed government face-to-face until Ethiopian troops leave Somalia. The country has been in near-perpetual conflict since the 1991 toppling of a dictator.
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