Today’s Somali News Bulletin

[xiinfaniin]

Heavy Fighting Reported in Somalia CapitalBy MOHAMMED IBRAHIM

 

MOGADISHU, Somalia — At least 22 people were killed and more than 60 were wounded Thursday in intense clashes that erupted between Islamist insurgent groups and Somali government forces supported by African Union soldiers, witnesses and health officials said.

 

The fighting appeared to be the heaviest in Mogadishu, the capital of this war-weary country, since an attack by the Shabab, one of the Islamist groups, shook the city during Ramadan, the Muslim holiday that ended a few weeks ago.

 

In the early hours of Thursday morning, witnesses reported face-to-face fighting between insurgents and the government forces helped by African Union soldiers in two Mogadishu neighborhoods, Howlwadaag and Hodan. The witnesses said both sides were using small arms and artillery shells.

 

The witnesses said at least four people died and 19 were wounded when an artillery round hit a building where people were seeking shelter from the mayhem in another Mogadishu neighborhood, Bakaro. Abdullahi Ali, a shopkeeper in Bakaro, reported a scene of “ pools of blood and screaming; I was really shocked.”

 

Another witness said that a shell that landed in a road junction in the Bakaro market killed two women and a boy and wounded at least three others.

 

Another witness, Fartun Abdi, reported recognizing the body of a civilian boy she knew as well as those of three government soldiers lying in alleys of Mogadishu’s Ceel Hindi neighborhood, famous for its cactus trees.

 

The head of a volunteer ambulance service, Ali Mose, said his crews had collected 19 dead and ferried 60 wounded to Mogadishu’s Dayniile Hospital. He said the clashes in the capital were “the heaviest fighting in recent days.”

 

The Shabab and another militant Islamist armed group, Hizb-ul- Islam, have been waging an expanded offensive to oust the weak transitional federal government, which is supported by the African Union forces but has little control of anything outside a few square blocks of the capital.

 

The intensified fighting on Thursday came two days after the resignation of the prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, whose government had been widely criticized for failing to improve security.

 

Somalia has been plagued by nearly two decades of mayhem and anarchy since the last functioning government was toppled in 1991 by clan militias that subsequently turned on each other.