By Mustafa Haji Abdinur
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Dozens more were wounded as loyalist forces intensified their offensive to drive out insurgents and widen control of key positions.
One security officer said four government fighters and three insurgents were killed in the latest clashes while reports from local residents showed at least five civilians were among the dead.
"I cannot exactly say how many civilians were caught in the crossfire, but there were around seven combatants, three of them rebels, killed this morning in the Jamhuriya area," Somali security officer Abdi Ali Hasan said.
The fighting, which erupted early Wednesday as government forces made a fresh push to reconquer positions previously held by hardline Islamist fighters, was still going on around 1100 GMT, Hasan said.
Witnesses described the clashes in the Somali capital as very intense and said civilians continued to bear the brunt of the violence that has plagued the country almost uninterruptedly for 18 years.
"I saw the dead bodies of five civilians, one of them a woman," said eyewitness Mohamed Bashir, a resident of the Jamhuriya district. "Three of the victims died when a mortar shell struck their house."
The shaky transitional Somali government has vowed to press on with its onslaught until it recaptures full control of the oceanside capital.
"Government forces are in an intensive military offensive against the rebels and they are gaining ground," Information Minister Farhan Mohamoud told reporters in the battle-wrecked city.
"The military operations will continue until the violent people are driven out of the capital," he said, adding that once Mogadishu is back in government hands, the offensive will shift to Somalia's regions.
Earlier a military officer Said Mohamed told AFP: "We are stretching the insurgents thin. Our forces took control of new locations in northern Mogadishu this morning."
Somalia's defence minister claimed late Tuesday that his forces were regaining control on Mogadishu and repelling a month-old offensive by insurgents bent on toppling the Western-backed transitional administration.
Speaking in Burundi, Defence Minister Mohammed Abdi Gandi claimed that 14 out of 16 neighbourhoods in the seaside Somali capital were now under government control. "That means we are making progress," he said.
Battles over so-called control of districts have generally boiled down to skirmishes around an area's main police station, with neither side proving it had the ability to conquer and hold more than a handful of strongholds.
Witnesses said Wednesday's fighting trapped indoors any residents who wanted to flee to safety and many were running out of water and electricity.
"The fighting is intensifying minute after minute and we cannot even poke our heads out, we are trapped inside our houses," Abdulahi Dhubow, a resident of the Jamhuriya neighbourhood, told AFP.
While the Al-Qaeda linked hardline Islamist insurgents had initially looked on the brink of ousting President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed from his last redoubt in Mogadishu, the rebellion has looked unable to make a final and decisive push.
Backed by African peacekeepers securing the presidential palace, as well as the seaport and the airport, Somali government forces launched a counter-offensive almost two weeks ago and regained some ground.
More than 200 people have been killed and 70,000 displaced in the month-old battles initially launched by extremists advocating the imposition of strict Sharia law in the Horn of African nation.
A lawless country of around 10 million, Somalia has had no effective central authority since former president Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, setting off a bloody cycle of violence.
Source: AFP, June 03, 2009