MOGADISHU, Somalia - Militants fired mortars at the presidential palace Tuesday, hours after the president moved in, but he was unhurt in the attack that killed a 12-year-old boy and wounded three of his siblings, witnesses and officials said.
Elsewhere in the increasingly violent capital, a remote-controlled roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying the deputy mayor, killing two government aides and seriously wounding a bodyguard, another witness told The Associated Press. Gunbattles also erupted in the city.
Insurgents launched their most violent attacks since the interim government took control of Mogadishu at the beginning of the year, firing six mortars at the hilltop palace only hours after President Abdullahi Yusuf moved to the city from the southern stronghold of Baidoa.
Ethiopian tanks quickly sealed off the area and several hundred Ethiopian and government troops created a 160-foot protective cordon around the palace, according to an AP reporter.
Yusuf was unharmed during the 10-minute attack, presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamoud Hussein told the AP.
But Abdullah Ahmed said his 12-year-old son was killed in the shelling on the palace, and three of his children were wounded.
"They were sleeping when the mortar hit us. It is sad to see your children to be killed in front of you and you can't do anything," Ahmed said.
Somalia's government and troops from neighboring Ethiopia drove out a radical Islamic movement late last year, but the government is now struggling with a growing insurgency and the Ethiopians have started pulling out.
African Union peacekeepers who began arriving last week also have come under attack. The peacekeepers are the first here in more than a decade.
Earlier Tuesday, Deputy Mayor Ibrahim Omar Sabriye was only slightly wounded in the leg by the bomb that struck his four-vehicle convoy, said bodyguard Abdikadir Ahmed.
Two government aides were killed when their vehicle was destroyed by the bomb and a bodyguard was seriously wounded when shrapnel hit him in the chest, he said.
While insurgents are launching increasingly violent attacks, such a bombing was a rare tactic.
Elsewhere in Mogadishu, Ethiopian troops protecting government installations battled with insurgents, scattering dozens of schoolchildren who were caught in the crossfire as they left classes, witnesses said.
Teacher Mohamed Hussein Abdi said dozens of his young students fled screaming as fighting began near Hoyga Hamar school.
"We had just finished classes when the fighting broke out," he told AP. "When the children heard the gunfire, they just scattered.
"I could not hide myself because I was trying to stop the children running," he said.
The gunmen attacked in minibuses and small cars before fleeing. Ethiopian troops used artillery to return fire, Abdi said.
Gunbattles erupted in several different locations in the city of 2 million, with insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns during the attacks on an Ethiopian military base and a military convoy.
One Ethiopian military truck carrying soldiers was hit by a rocket and caught fire, said witness Shino Moalin Norow, who sells drinking water near the scene.
Three civilians were wounded and taken to a hospital, witnesses said.
The peacekeepers, all from Uganda, are the vanguard of a larger force authorized by the
United Nations to help the government assert its authority and to allow Ethiopian forces to leave. Insurgents believed to be the remnants of the Council of Islamic Courts have staged almost daily attacks against the government, its armed forces and the Ethiopians.
"Terrorist elements have attacked bases of government troops in the capital," said the Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle. "We have repelled them."
Meanwhile at least 42 people, mainly children, have died in the last 24 hours from a suspected cholera outbreak in southern Somalia, doctors said.
More than 240 others have been hospitalized, and doctors fear more deaths because of the lack of proper medical facilities or medicines in the war-ravaged country.
Somalia descended into chaos in 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator, carved the capital into armed, clan-based camps, and left most of the rest of the country ungoverned. The transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help, but has struggled to assert control.
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I THINK AFBIIJO DIED
