SOMALIA: Attacks in Mogadishu leaves 35 people dead as peace talks due to begin in Djibouti

Record ID: 862996

  • Title: SOMALIA: Attacks in Mogadishu leaves 35 people dead as peace talks due to begin in Djibouti
  • Date: 11th May 2008
  • Summary: MORTAR SURVIVOR LOOKS ON
  • Embargoed: 26th May 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Somalia
  • City:
  • Country: Somalia
  • Topics:
  • Reuters ID: LVABLE5Q1SQ1CLEP0QYKRKZ1JCKP
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  • Story Text: Islamist insurgents killed five government soldiers in an ambush outside the capital Mogadishu on Saturday (May 10), adding to days of bloodshed that have cast a pall over rare peace talks.
    Fighting in Mogadishu killed another six more people on Friday (May 9), including four orphans, a day after Islamist rebels firing grenades briefly seized a major police base in the heart of Somalia's capital.
    More than 35 people have died since Thursday (May 8) in clashes between rebels and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops that broke out a week after a militant leader was killed in a U.S. air strike.
    Residents said the insurgents attacked government forces in the city's Harayale district on Friday as dusk fell, triggering exchanges of heavy machine-gun fire and artillery barrages.
    Two men's bodies lay close to a nearby police checkpoint, residents said. More than a dozen people were injured.

    "Two of my children and their mother were wounded in this attack.
    Six people were killed at this house. As you can see seventeen others were wounded," said one Mogadishu resident, Mohamed Hassan Hashi.
    Friday's clashes broke out after the rebels seized control of a police compound late on Thursday in heavily guarded streets near the city's air and sea ports. They looted weapons and burnt vehicles before retreating as reinforcements arrived.
    The violence cast a pall over tentative, U.N.-brokered peace talks between the interim government and opposition exiles that were due to begin on Saturday in Djibouti.
    The militants behind near-daily ambushes and roadside bombs are the remnants of an Islamist movement that was ousted by the government and its Ethiopian allies at the start of last year.
    The leaders of that group, and other critics of President Abdullahi Yusuf, have since moved to Ethiopia's arch-foe Eritrea and formed the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia.
    They had repeatedly refused to meet government officials until Ethiopian troops left Somali soil. But last month they dropped that demand and agreed to send delegates to Djibouti.
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