Dozens Killed as Fighting Intensifies in Somalia

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November 22, 2008

Dozens Killed as Fighting Intensifies in Somalia

By MOHAMMED IBRAHIM and SHARON OTTERMAN

MOGADISHU, Somalia — At least two dozen people, including six children, were killed in heavy fighting here in Somalia’s capital on Friday as government troops tried to reassert control and Islamist insurgents fought back fiercely, witnesses said.

Bodies littered the streets of the bullet-pocked city, and hundreds of residents began to flee. Both sides claimed victory.

Violence between Islamist rebels and government forces has intensified over the past few weeks. Islamist insurgents now control much of south central Somalia, including many neighborhoods within Mogadishu, and seem intent on seizing the few enclaves the government, with Ethiopian muscle, still controls.

The gun battles on Friday started just after dawn outside the house of a local district commissioner, Ahmed Daaci, in a southern neighborhood of the city. At least 17 people died and 6 were wounded in that fighting, according to witnesses’ accounts.

Mr. Daaci, who survived the attack, said that government forces had repulsed a group of insurgents who attacked his house, and that 17 of the attackers were killed.

The bodies were left on display for hours, after government forces blocked residents from collecting them, an apparent attempt to ward off further attacks.

“I saw 12 dead bodies lying on the streets, and there were 2 bodies in front of my house,” said Abdurashid Abdullahi, a resident of the Medina neighborhood, where the fighting took place. “They are the Islamists,” he said.

More fighting erupted in the afternoon, when Islamist insurgents and government forces, backed by Ethiopian troops, fired artillery at each other. Six children were killed when a mortar shell slammed into their house, said a resident who lived next to the crushed building.

Ethiopian troops were to start leaving some positions in Mogadishu on Friday, under terms of a recent United Nations-brokered peace deal in Djibouti between the transitional government and a coalition of Islamist groups. African Union troops are scheduled to replace them.

But there were no signs of a withdrawal, witnesses said.

One of the insurgent groups, a faction of the Union of Islamic Courts, considered one of the more moderate Islamist groups in Somalia, said it had lost six men in the day’s fighting and had killed 15 government soldiers. The figures could not be independently verified.

Ethiopian troops entered the country in late 2006 and ousted an Islamist administration that briefly controlled much of south and central Somalia. But the Islamists regrouped, and have steadily progressed from staging sporadic hit-and-run guerrilla attacks to seizing — and holding — large swaths of territory.

A deal reached late last month between the transitional government and the main Islamist-led opposition group called for Ethiopian troops to pull out of areas in Mogadishu and the central garrison town of Beledweyne by Nov. 21, which was Friday.

Under the deal, the Somali government and the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia are to assemble a 10,000-strong police force to help the African Union peacekeepers control the areas.

Somalia has been without a functioning central government since 1991, when Mohammed Siad Barre was removed from power and the army fell into the hands of clan militias, throwing the country into lawlessness.


Mohammed Ibrahim reported from Mogadishu, and Sharon Otterman from New York.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company