By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN and SALAD DUHUL
Saturday, May 23, 2009
In addition to the dead, 181 people were wounded during Friday's offensive by the U.N.-backed government, said Ali Sheik Yasi, deputy chairman of Elman Human Rights Organization.
The center of the city was heavily shelled. Both sides fired mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and truck-mounted anti-aircraft missiles into residential areas.
The government was not immediately available for comment on the current situation.
Resident Abdi Haji said there was no fighting on Saturday and that the insurgents appeared to remain in control.
The Elman rights group, which collates casualty figures based on interviews with health officials, morgues and witnesses, said more than 150 people have been killed since the latest round of fighting began two weeks ago.
The Islamic insurgents had captured several strategic locations in Mogadishu. Despite successes, they failed to gain control of key installations including the airport and presidential palace, which are guarded by African Union peacekeepers.
Hassan Mahdi, a spokesman for the insurgent alliance known as the Islamic Party, said government soldiers on Friday tried to push the rebels away from neighborhoods they had recently gained, but that the Islamists held their positions.
The two main Islamist insurgent groups, the Islamic Party and al-Shabab, formed an alliance a month ago. Although the two groups have differing aims, they agreed to work together to overthrow Somalia's new government, headed by their former ally President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed.
They consider Ahmed a traitor for signing a peace deal with the previous administration which paved the way for him to become president.
The U.N. has said some 49,000 people had fled the capital, and the humanitarian situation was dire. Many families camped out under trees or by the side of roads, sheltered by nothing more than a few scraps of plastic, without access to food or water.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a socialist dictator then turned on each other.
Source: AP, May 23, 2009