Five injured in fighting in Somali capital ..More violence.

[Wisdom_Seeker]

MOGADISHU (AFP) - Brief but heavy fighting left at least five people injured after gunmen attacked police stations in the south of the Somali capital, residents said.

 

Residents said the skirmishes started when the gunmen fired a rocket into the station in Mogadishu's southern Wardhigley and Hawlwadag neighbourhoods.

 

"There was a brief exchange of fire from small arms and heavy machine guns," Abdullahi Mohamed, a resident said.

 

"Five people, including policemen, were wounded," said another resident. "People in the area are terrified and the movement of people as well as vehicles was halted."

 

Residents reported "three heavy blasts" in Hawlwadag neighbourhood. Police sealed off both stations.

 

Residents have reported a surge in crime in Mogadishu since the Islamists were ousted after a six-month rule during which they managed to restore a degree of order in a city without an effective central authority for 16 years.

 

An interim government was set up in 2004 but had been forced to operate out of the provincial backwater of Baidoa until December when the Ethiopian government intervened on their behalf and marched on Mogadishu.

 

The Islamists, who fled before their arrival, had restored a degree of order to Mogadishu since last June when they crushed a collection of warlords who had been slugging it out in the capital for the previous 16 years.

 

The government and Ethiopian forces have since been the target of a series of attacks by rebels, including on the president's official residence.

 

At least 30 suspected Islamists who were arrested in the border fleeing Ethiopian troops were deported to Somalia, police officials said.

 

This brings the number of suspected Islamists deported to at least 64 in the past two weeks.

 

Those deported did not include an American, a Frenchman, two Syrians and a Tunisian were are suspected to being Islamists.

Source