Bodies Littered in Mogadishu As Fighting Continues Between Ethiopians And Insurgents

[Castro]

Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu)

NEWS

April 22, 2007

Posted to the web April 22, 2007

 

By Aweys Osman Yusuf

Mogadishu

 

A Sporadic gun battle is yet continuing in the capital Mogadishu for the fourth straight day. The fighting mainly rages in north neighborhoods in the capital where more than 200 people are believed to have been killed and more than 400 wounded, according to hospitals in the volatile city.

 

The exchanges of mortar rounds and rockets by Ethiopian troops and the Islamic insurgents turned the impoverished capital of two million in to a battleground where the wounded get no medical attention and decomposed dead bodies litter in north neighborhoods of the capital as relatives of the victims could not get in due to the torrential artillery bombardments in the areas.

 

Ahmed Ulusow, a father of six, told Shabelle Sunday that his brother was among four people who were killed by artillery while fleeing Yaqshid neighborhood, north Mogadishu. "My brother was on his cell phone talking with me. He and other people were trying to leave the village as two rockets landed at their place. They were all dead," he said.

 

Ulusow said that some of the villagers fleeing the neighborhood confirmed the death of his brother to him, indicating that he could not go in the area to take away the body of his brother because rockets and mortar rounds are raining down the neighborhood.

 

A doctor and three employees with a local relief aid agency, DBG, were killed after three mortar rounds hit the building of DBG in north of the capital.

 

Dahir Dhere, a medical officer in Medina hospital, told local journalists that more than 100 people who were wounded in the ongoing battle were admitted to the hospital. "The number of people who were wounded by stray bullets and explosions of rockets are increasingly admitted and the hospital is overwhelmingly full because there more patients than the hospital can manage," he said.

 

The children's hospital SOS in northeast of Mogadishu was also occupied by a large number of patients who were wounded by the heavy weaponry fired by the Islamic insurgents and the Ethiopian forces.

 

Abdrizak Washington, a doctor in SOS hospital, has told Shabelle by the phone Sunday that 7 of 60 patients, who were wounded in the fighting, died from their wounds.