Thursday, April 19, 2007
Minibuses raced scores of wounded to packed hospitals where doctors lost count of the operations they were performing. 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.
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 (AU) 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 yesterday.
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.
Catastrophe looming for refugees
More than 200 000 people - or a fifth of Mogadishu's population - have fled since February, and the UN warned a catastrophe was looming for refugees.
A diarrhoea epidemic has already killed more than 400, while cholera has struck hundreds, said UN 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.
Hussein Aideed, the Somalian deputy prime minister - 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 a bid to oppose Ethiopia, its regional arch-foe.
South of Mogadishu, a land mine blew up an Ethiopian truck today, locals said. In another incident, a mortar hit an Ethiopian troop base, prompting soldiers there to fire on two passing minibuses, injuring dozens.
Source: Reuters, April 19, 2007