By Guled Mohamed
Thursday, July 12, 2007
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Mounting violence killed at least six people in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Thursday ahead of a major peace meeting at the weekend, residents said.
Three people died in a seventh day of battles between troops and suspected Islamist rebels in the city's sprawling Bakara Market, while the bodies of three other civilians, all with bullet holes in their heads, were dumped at a busy intersection.
The latest bloodshed followed an overnight barrage of mortar bombs -- the first fired in the chaotic capital for weeks -- that slammed into the hilltop Villa Somalia presidential palace and the proposed site of Sunday's reconciliation conference.
Witness Mohamed Abdullahi said the shootout in Bakara between interim government troops, police and suspected Islamist insurgents also wounded five people, including one policeman.
"Three people died," he told Reuters. "Two died from a grenade blast while the third was shot dead by police."
Relatives of the three other victims said gunmen herded them from their homes before killing them.
"They were tied together and shot in the head," said Abdi Abdulle, a relative of one of the dead men. "They were ordinary people working together in a ration store. This is inhuman."
HEAVY FIGHTING
Nearby, suspected insurgents also fired rockets at a police station in the city's Hodan neighbourhood, police said.
"Heavy fighting ensued before they ran away," senior police commander Ali Nur told Reuters. "We later captured two of them."
The latest violence came shortly after President Abdullahi Yusuf's interim government said it would push ahead with a twice-postponed reconciliation conference seen as key to establishing peace in the Horn of Africa nation.
Some 1,355 clan elders, ex-warlords and politicians from across the country have been invited to attend on Sunday.
"Even if a nuclear bomb explodes in Mogadishu, the conference will happen as scheduled," local media quoted Yusuf as saying on Thursday.
His government has been struggling to stamp its authority on Mogadishu since ousting the Islamists with the help of Ethiopia's military in a brief war over the New Year.
An Islamist-led insurgency has rumbled on since then, triggering two bouts of heavy fighting with Ethiopian troops that killed at least 1,300 people and uprooted 400,000 more.
Nairobi-based diplomats following Somalia say they expect Sunday's start to be little more than a formal opening, to buy more time to organise the meeting and assemble delegates.
Source: Reuters, July 12, 2007