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By Abdi Sheikh
Monday, January 12, 2009
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Shells hit a crowded Mogadishu market and nearby residential area on Monday, killing at least 11 people in fighting between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government forces.
Medical staff told Reuters they had transported 11 corpses and 16 wounded people from Bakara market and the Gedjael neighbourhood after the insurgents exchanged shells with Somali soldiers and their Ethiopian military allies.
"I saw eight dead people and more than 10 wounded in Bakara market," shopkeeper Osman Aden told Reuters in the shattered, coastal capital of Somalia.
"Shells landed on them as they were taking cover behind a hotel wall. Some of them could not be identified as their flesh was mangled."
Islamists have been battling government and Ethiopian troops for the past two years, since Addis Ababa sent forces to oust the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu.
More than 16,000 civilians have been killed in the insurgency, a million people have been forced from their homes, more than a third of the population depend on aid, and large areas of Mogadishu lie empty and destroyed.
With an estimated 3,000 Ethiopians now withdrawing, some Islamist factions appear to be turning on al Shabaab fighters, a hardline insurgent group that wants to impose a strict version of Islamic law traditionally shunned by Somalis.
Witnesses said about 51 people, including civilians and fighters, died in battles at the weekend between al Shabaab and another Islamist group, Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, as that group took over the central Somali trading town of Gurael.
Analysts say while the Ethiopian withdrawal could usher in a new chapter of violence, it may also be a window of opportunity to bring some Islamist groups into the political process and form a broad, inclusive government.
Somalia has been without effective central rule since 1991. (Additional reporting by Abdi Guled and Ibrahim Mohamed in Mogadishu; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne).
Source: Reuters, Jan 12, 2009