Agence France-Presse,
MOGADISHU: At least 29 people were killed Sunday in the heaviest clashes to rock Mogadishu in two months, bringing to 47 the death toll for two days of fighting between Ethiopian-backed Somali forces and Islamist insurgents.
The worst violence hit the northern neighbourhood of Huriwaa, where fighting has been ongoing since Saturday, leaving civilians caught in the crossfire. Shelling and gun fire could still be heard after dusk on Sunday.
Local resident Muse Hassan Ali told AFP that Ethiopian forces had killed at least five civilians in his neighbourhood.
“Two of them were working for the water company. The other three were killed as they were hiding in a house to shelter for the exchanges of fire,” he said.
Three people died and 19 others admitted after fresh fighting erupted late Sunday, bringing the death toll to 47 in two days, a doctor in the capital's Madina hospital said.
Another witness, Hussein Mursal Mohamed, said he had seen the bodies of three other people shot dead inside the house, and added he had seen the body of another civilian in a nearby street.
Since fighting broke out on Saturday, several civilians have been killed when tank shells smashed into inhabited areas.
Shamso Haji Farah told AFP that her neighbour and his son were killed on the spot when a shell crashed through the walls of their home. “His two daughters were also wounded,” she added.
An officer in the Somali government forces, Hashi Mohamed, told AFP the clashes had been very intense on Sunday, but maintained that Islamist insurgents had been defeated.
“There was fierce fighting in Huriwaa today. We lost some men, about five maybe,” he said.
An eyewitness said he had seen the bodies of four soldiers in one single area where Somali force were engaging Islamist rebels.
“I saw four government soldiers killed near Al-Toba mosque. They were reinforcing the Ethiopian troops fighting in the area,” he said.
An Islamist commander who asked not to be named said that only three rebel fighters were killed in Sunday's clashes.
“We lost three men today in the fighting, but the Ethiopian forces and stooges lost the battle,” he told AFP.
Four civilians and two soldiers had been killed earlier Sunday, while four more people died of their wounds in hospital.
Eighteen people were confirmed to have been killed on Saturday, bringing the total number of deaths for two days of fighting in the capital to 44.
It remained difficult to establish an accurate death toll as some bodies remained on the streets and none of the belligerents were compiling official figures.
The senior medical staff at Mogadishu's Deynile, Madina and Keysaney hospitals told AFP that in addition to the dead, they had received a total of close to 100 wounded, mostly as a result of Saturday's fighting alone.
Civilians have borne the brunt of the past year of violence that has brought to its knees a city already demolished by civil conflict raging since the 1991 ouster of former president Mohamed Siad Barre.
But Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein defended the operations carried out against the insurgents by the government and Ethiopian forces.
“We call for peace and are striving towards it, but it is necessary to confront with war any one that favours violence,” he said at a press conference Sunday.
Ethiopian troops came to the rescue of the embattled transitional government in late 2006 to oust an Islamist militia which had taken control of large parts of the restive Horn of Africa country.
The rebels were ousted from the capital a year ago, but the militia's remnants have since waged a deadly guerrilla war against the government as well as allied Ethiopian troops and African Union peacekeepers.
Mogadishu has been the epicentre of the clashes that have killed thousands and forced hundreds of thousands of others to flee.
