|
Mogadishu police chief among 22 killed in clashes
Somali government forces attacked rebel strongholds in Mogadishu on Wednesday, triggering battles that killed at least 22 people, including the capital's police chief, witnesses and officials said.Residents cowered in their homes or took cover behind buildings as mortars slammed into the city. Rebels wearing headscarves and ammunition belts draped over their shoulders were seen arriving from the outskirts of the capital to join the battle. The government only controls a few blocks of Mogadishu with the help of an African Union peacekeeping force that guards the air and sea ports and other key government installations. Different insurgent groups control the rest of Mogadishu, and their goal is to topple Somalia's Western-backed government. "A mortar landed on a neighbour's house and killed two people and injured four others," witness Abdiwali Dahir said from one of the two areas of southern Mogadishu where the fighting was under way. Police spokesman Col. Abdullahi Hassan Barise said Mogadishu police chief Col. Ali Said died in the fighting but was unable to provide details about how that had happened. Said had led the capital's police force for about two years. Another witness, Farah Abdi, said he saw five corpses lying in the capital's streets. Speaking in a telephone interview as the sound of heavy gunfire echoed in the background, Abdi said three of the victims were civilians and that the two others appeared to be of a rebel fighter and a government soldier. An administrator at Mogadishu's Medina Hospital, Ali Ade, said it had received 39 wounded people, with three of them dying. In another part of southern Mogadishu, an Associated Press reporter saw six bodies lying in a street outside a home that had been hit by a mortar. A grieving Somali woman identified one of the victims as her son. "A stray mortar landed on these young men who sought refuge in our house," said the woman, Hawo Hassan. "It is a tragic day. The fighting occurred after a surge of violence in Somalia's capital in May had killed about 200 people as insurgents battled the government and its allies. In another development on Wednesday, UNICEF condemned the looting of its supplies and the continued occupation of its compound in the southern Somalia town of Jowhar by an rebel group. Looted supplies include nutritional supplements for about 40,000 children under the age of three, the agency said in a statement. UNICEF said al-Shabab militiamen on May 22 occupied the compound when they took control of Jowhar, which had been an operational hub for the agency's humanitarian work in southern and central Somalia. Refugees: The world's largest refugee camp in Kenya hosting Somali refugees is bursting at the seams, aid groups warn, asking that Kenya grant more land to host the hundreds of Somalis arriving in the UN-run Dadaab cluster every day. Posted by: 2009-06-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=272233 |