by Mustafa Haji Abdinur
Sun Feb 18, 2007
Police said the four travelling in the car were all killed when their vehicle exploded in Mogadishu's Tawfiiq neighbourhood.
Police official Garad Jama said investigators were probing the cause of the explosion, which also injured four bystanders.
"We are still not sure what caused this explosion," Jama told AFP.
Mogadishu has seen a rise in violence since an Islamist movement, which seized Mogadishu from warlords who had lawlessly ruled the capital, was driven out last December by government forces backed by Ethiopian troops.
In a separate incident, masked attackers fired on a police patrol vehicle, killing an officer and wounding two others, in the northern Eymiska district, witnesses said.
"Policemen were driving when gunmen in another car opened fire on them ... one of the policemen was killed on the spot and two others wounded," local resident Ahmed Sheik Muhidin said.
Hours later, two people were killed and three wounded when government forces came under fire from unidentified gunmen.
"Heavy fire was exchanged and two people, one of them a woman, was killed," said a witness, Zakariye Mohamed.
On Saturday, at least one person was killed and 12 others injured when a mortar shell landed on a camp housing displaced people in the capital's port area.
Residents have rallied to protest the presence of the Ethiopian troops, some of whom began withdrawing last month, though many of the demonstrations have turned violent.
The Islamists, who brought a semblance of order in Mogadishu and other areas they controlled in central and southern Somalia, have disbanded into clan militia.
But some of them have vowed to fight the government and a planned African Union peacekeeping force.
The AU plans to deploy an 8,000-strong force but has so far only managed to raise half that number. The 53-member bloc has been hamstrung by disagreements, as well as funding and manpower problems.
The body's officials have hinted that Nigeria, Burundi, Malawi and Ghana may contribute forces.
A previous 1993-1995 peace mission ended disastrously after United Nations and United States troops fled the country, paving the way for the rise of the warlords who sub-divided the nation into a patchwork of fiefdoms.
Somalia has been without a functioning central government since strongman Mohamed Siad Barre was driven from power in 1991, plunging the Horn of Africa country into chaos.
The current interim government, formed two years ago in Kenya, has been riddled with infighting and unable to exert control across the country of some 10 million people.
Source: AFP, Feb 19, 2007