From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2008 - 05:30:31 EDT
Eight killed in Mogadishu clashes: residents
by Mustafa Haji Abdibur
Sep 11, 4:56 PM ET
MOGADISHU (AFP) - At least eight people were killed in the Somali capital on Wednesday in fighting that erupted after Ethiopia-backed government troops raided a suspected rebel hideout, residents said.
Government troops and Islamist insurgents clashed using machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades in northern Mogadishu near a military camp, they said.
"I saw four civilians and two Somali soldiers who were killed by mortar shells," said Hassan Abdullahi Abdulle, a resident.
The Somali army said it killed two Islamist insurgents while three of its men were wounded in the clashes.
"Two insurgents who were killed in the fighting were carried by their colleagues for burial after fighting stopped," Somali army spokesman Dahir Mohamed Hirsi told AFP.
Residents said stray shells wounded at least 13 civilians -- many of them children -- in Huriwa, one of the most volatile districts in the seaside capital.
Several residents confirmed the clashes that came after days of calm in a city that is contested between the UN-backed government and Islamists accused of links to Al-Qaeda.
In Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian defence ministry said at least 15 insurgents died.
"Fifteen Shebab (Islamist) insurgents were killed by the transitional government troops this afternoon in defensive measures taken after an attack on their military barracks in Mogadishu," it said in a statement.
"Scores of others were injured while a number of weapons were captured during the attack," it added, but the veracity of the statement could not be confirmed.
In Nairobi, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki pleaded with the world to help Somalia end nearly two decades of suffering that has been worsened by chronic food shortage.
"Indeed, the recent developments in that country will require a new impetus in bringing all the parties in the conflict to a process of dialogue that will guarantee the people of Somalia peace and security that they so much desire," Kibaki said in a statement.
Kenya chaired a regional peace panel that helped reach a peace accord that brought Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed to power in 1994, but the aging ex-warlord has failed to restore stability in his nation.
Ethiopian troops intervened to prop up the feeble Somali transitional government at the end of 2006 and eventually drove the Islamist militants from much of the the country's southern and central regions, where they had established Sharia law.
Since then, the Islamists have killed numerous government officials and vowed to fight until the Ethiopians, whom they regard as occupiers, withdraw from the nation of up to 10 million.
Somalia plunged into civil war after the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre, setting off a deadly power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore a functional government.
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