Mogadishu market hit by rockets

[Enemy_Of_Mad_Mullah]

Mogadishu market hit by rockets
By Sahal Abdulle

Mogadishu - Rockets slammed into a Mogadishu market on Thursday amid battles between troops and Somali insurgents that killed at least 12 civilians but probably many more, residents said.

Heavy shelling resounded around the coastal capital as Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies targeted insurgent strongholds in residential areas.

Minibuses raced scores of wounded to packed hospitals where doctors lost count of the operations they were performing.

'There are many wounded'
"Six consecutive missiles hit. ... There are many wounded," said Hassan Ibrahim, who drove a minivan full of injured people to Madina Hospital from the central Al Barakah district.

Screams resounded through the hospitals' corridors. A Reuters witness saw a tiny baby boy, 40 days old, being operated on for a bad stomach wound. The boy survived.

"One shell landed four feet from where I was," said resident Barlin Salad. "It wounded three people and killed two others."

Witnesses said several rockets slammed into the Al Barakah market when it was crowded with shoppers. Electricity is severely rationed in the bullet-scarred city, and women usually trek to markets each afternoon to buy fresh milk.

"A lot of women were crying and men were running and pulling people out from under rubble all over the place," market worker Adan Kulow, who was injured by shrapnel, said. "I saw about 20 wounded people carried away on hand carts."

The insurgents, drawn from the local Hawiye clan and a militant Islamist movement, are fighting the interim government, its Ethiopian army backers and African Union peacekeepers for control of a city that has been in chaos for the last 16 years.

Four days of ferocious fighting killed 1 000 people at the end of March and a truce since then has failed to prevent sporadic clashes. At least seven people also died on Wednesday.

Ethiopian and Somali government troops ousted the Islamist movement - which had Hawiye backing and ruled much of southern Somalia for the second half of 2006 - from Mogadishu in a brief war over the New Year.

The interim government, established in Kenya in 2004, is the 14th attempt to set up central rule in Somalia since the Horn of Africa nation slid into warlord-fuelled anarchy with the toppling of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

More than 200 000 people - or a fifth of Mogadishu's population - have fled since February, and the United Nations warned on Thursday a catastrophe was looming for refugees.

A diarrhoea epidemic has already killed more than 400, while cholera has struck hundreds, said United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Eric Laroche. "A humanitarian crisis is going to turn into a catastrophe and very soon," he said in Geneva.

The government is pursuing a reconciliation conference in Mogadishu to plot a path to peace. But its first plan to start a meeting this week failed due to insecurity and infighting.

Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aideed, a Hawiye member, broke ranks with the government and flew to Eritrea to speak with a prominent Islamist leader and Somalia's sacked assembly speaker.

Eritrea is accused of - but denies - backing the Islamists in an attempt to oppose Ethiopia, its regional arch-foe.

South of Mogadishu, a land mine blew up an Ethiopian truck on Thursday, locals said. In another incident, a mortar hit an Ethiopian troop base, prompting soldiers there to fire on two passing minibuses, injuring dozens.


published on Friday, 20 April 2007