MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Nearly 200 Islamic fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns seized control of a central Somali town Monday and attacked a military convoy in a nearby village, residents said.
Bula Burde is the sixth Somali town to be attacked in recent months, as remnants of an extremist Islamic movement that once controlled Mogadishu fight to regain power.
Resident Aden Yabarow said by telephone the fighters had taken up defensive positions in Bula Burde and released scores of prisoners from the police station. Local businessman Haji Ahmed said he saw two bodies in the street — a soldier and a civilian.
"Our fighters confronted militias loyal to the regional leaders of Hiran and Middle Shabelle and inflicted heavy losses," a spokesman for the Islamist fighters, Abdi-rahiin Iisa Adow, told The Associated Press. He said fighters seized six vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft guns and set fire to another.
"Our aim is not to remain and hold a town, but to cripple the enemy forces and punish them with the hands of our young fighters," he said.
Somalia's shaky transitional government took over Mogadishu in the last days of 2006 with the help of Ethiopian troops and air power, unseating an extremist Islamic movement that had reigned for six months over most of southern Somalia. Now remnants of the Islamic movement are waging an insurgency.
Bula Burde has about 3,000 residents and is in the central Somali region of Hiran, 134 miles north of Mogadishu.
Of the six towns the insurgents have attacked and taken control of in recent months, three have been provincial capitals. The Islamists typically free prisoners and attack government forces before voluntarily withdrawing.
In Halgan village, 25 miles north, insurgents attacked a convoy of government troops, leaving two soldiers and two civilians dead, resident Ali Gure said.
In the capital, heavy fighting killed at least four people, including two soldiers, and wounded five others, residents said.
There are daily skirmishes in Mogadishu, which the government has never fully controlled. Although the government is backed politically by the U.N. and by Ethiopian firepower, many Somalis say it is heavily corrupt and ineffectual.
Witness Nadifo Ibarahim said the fighting began when insurgents fired machine guns at patrolling Somali soldiers, who then received support from allied Ethiopian troops.
Resident Mohamed Shabiye said he saw two Somali soldiers dead. "They were laying in the middle of the road with their guns on their chest," he said.
Another witness, Isse Ali, said two civilians were killed.
Associated Press writers Mohamed Sheikh Nor and Salad Duhul contributed to this report.
SOURCE: AP, March 31, 2008