Monday, February 19, 2007
Ethiopian troops responded to the attack on their base with heavy artillery, witnesses said.
"Three mortar rounds landed in our quarter of Hodan, killing three people and injuring eight others," said resident Moktar Aden Cheick.
Another witness of the attack in the southern suburb of Hodan said: "I've seen dead people and blood all over the area. Eight people were taken to hospital, and three were dead on the spot."
Witnesses said two more people were killed in similar mortar attacks on the southern suburbs of Bakara and Hamar Jagid.
It was not clear if anyone was killed in the attack on the Ethiopian base at the nearby Digfer hospital.
One resident of the area said "armed militia have fired mortar shells near our houses targeting the Ethiopian base. The Ethiopians have responded with heavy artillery weapons."
A car bomb killed at least four people in Mogadishu on Sunday and three others including a policeman were gunned down in violence which has surged since the toppling of an Islamist movement late last year.
The Islamists with alleged links to the Al-Qaeda terror network seized Mogadishu from US-backed warlords last year but were driven out in December by government forces supported by Ethiopian troops.
Most of the Islamist gunmen have disbanded into clan militia but some 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.
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.
Source: AFP, Feb 19, 2007