 Mortars, machineguns and rockets pounded Mogadishu on Saturday in a seventh day of festivities fierce militia fighting that has killed at least 144 people so far and which spread quickly across the ravaged city. As the street battles dragged on in rundown areas of the Somali capital, the interim government — powerless to stop the shooting and unable to enter Mogadishu — called for foreign intervention to end the worst fighting there in years.
| Yeah. That's gonna happen. |
At least 11 civilians were killed overnight and into Saturday as gunmen from a powerful alliance of warlords engaged in close-range firefights and artillery duels with militiamen backed by the city's influential Islamic courts. Fighting had originally been limited to the northern shantytown of SiiSii, but spread into the nearby areas of Yaqsid and Karan before erupting on Saturday in neighbourhoods across southern Mogadishu. Analysts view the fighting in the failed Horn of Africa state as a proxy battle between Al Qaeda and Washington, which is widely believed to be funding the warlords.
| And money well spent, we might add... |
The warring parties were massing militiamen and another warlord, Mohammad Dheere and his militia arrived from his stronghold in Jowhar to join the battle. "The coalition is planning to attack the Islamic court militia from other fronts," said Ali Nur, a militiaman allied to the warlords. The warlords closed off the entries in and out Mogadishu, including a key road to southern Somalia to block the advance of a powerful Islamic group heading to join its allies. Warlord Colonel Abdi Hassan Awale said his fighters were checking all vehicles travelling in and out of the city for the presence of foreigners believed to be training and fighting alongside the Islamic militias. "It was necessary to put pressure on these roads to catch the foreigners and the supporters trying to escape from the capital," Awale told Reuters. |