Sunday, April 20, 2008
Islamist insurgents ambushed a security vehicle in the capital's Madina neighbourhood overnight, killing two soldiers and a shop owner who was caught in the crossfire, eyewitness Husein Mohamed told AFP.
Another witness provided the same death toll and said the pick-up van transporting the troops was attacked by a large group of insurgents using hand grenades.
According to several witnesses, three other civilians were shot dead by Ethiopian troops in a northern district near Mogadishu University.
"The Ethiopian forces entered a compound where my brother was staying and they shot him in the head," said Husein Abdelaziz.
"We're not sure why they killed him but two other civilians were shot dead in nearby houses," he told AFP. "We want to bury the dead but the cemetery area is under the control of the Ethiopians."
The new bloodshed comes a day after 18 people, many of them civilians, died in heavy fighting pitting Islamist insurgents against Ethiopian troops and Somali government forces.
Dozens of people were admitted to hospital as a result of Saturday's fighting and medical officials told AFP that four more victims died of their wounds on Sunday.
"So far we received 51 civilians with injuries and two of them died, a woman and a young boy," said Husein Gutale, director of Mogadishu's Deynile hospital.
Dahir Dhere, deputy director of Madina hospital, said two civilians out of six admitted on Saturday had also died.
Another 36 injured were taken to the capital's Keysaney hospital.
The latest casualties bring to 28 the number of people killed in violent clashes since Saturday.
Civilians have borne the brunt of the past year of violence that has brought to its knees a city already demolished by civil conflict raging since the 1991 ouster of former president Mohamed Siad Barre.
But Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein defended the operations carried out against the insurgents by the government and Ethiopian forces.
"We call for peace and are striving towards it, but it is necessary to confront with war any one that favours violence," he said at a press conference Sunday.
Ethiopian troops came to the rescue of the embattled transitional government in late 2006 to oust an Islamist militia which had taken control of large parts of the restive Horn of Africa country.
The rebels were ousted from the capital a year ago, but the militia's remnants have since waged a deadly guerrilla war against the government as well as allied Ethiopian troops and African Union peacekeepers.
Mogadishu has been the epicentre of the clashes that have killed thousands and forced hundreds of thousands of others to flee.
Source: AFP, April 20, 2008