Somalia: Gunmen attack a police station overnight

[Hiiraan boy]

Mogadishu 19, June.07 ( Sh.M.Network) Unknown gunmen attacked a police station in Heliwa neighborhood, north of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, overnight. Residents said that they could hear the exchanges of gunfire that lasted in 30 minutes.

One person has died in the incident in which heavy weaponries were used, residents reported.

The district which has been under an indefinite government curfew since early May has been much of focus ever since the Ethiopian backed Somali transitional federal government moved to the capital after a massive Ethiopian military assault, routing the Union of the Islamic Courts fighters in December last year.

Great house-to-house weapons search operations took place in north neighborhoods while caches of weapons seized from different houses including a Somali tycoon’s house were exhibited to journalists.

Abdi Mohammed Fiidow, the deputy police commander in Mogadishu, said the search operations will continue until the capital is any longer invulnerable for weapons and criminals.

“Today’s weapons were mostly seized from Abdulqadir Enow’s house after the troops raided the house.

Enow, a Somali businessman, is not in the country currently. We will, however continue the search operations and the troops will raid any house they suspect of keeping weapons,” he told journalists in a news conference he held in north Mogadishu on Monday.

Government soldiers arrived in the vicinity where the fighting took place last night, searching houses nearby and interrogating residents.

Presidential spokesman wounded

At least two children were killed yesterday after a bomb hidden in a pile of rubbish on the roadside exploded near Jubba Hotel in Abdul-Aziz neighborhood, north of the capital.

In another incident unknown gunmen shot dead a civilian, wounding another in Bakara, Mogadishu’s largest bazaar.

The presidential spokesman, Hussein Hub Sired, was shot and wounded by unknown gunman in Hawlwadag junction near Bakara in south of the capital yesterday. Government officials told journalists that Sired was rushed to the Ugandan medical clinic near Aden Adde international airport.