A NUMBER of children were seriously wounded in the capital of breakaway Somaliland last week when police exchanged fire with a group of civilians accused of holding an illegal meeting, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Wednesday. Police reported one person killed and six wounded in the clashes in Hargeisa last Thursday. Unicef did not say how many children were wounded in the clashes, or whether they were in addition to or part of the statistics reported by police. “It has become all too clear that whenever and wherever violent clashes have recently taken place in the country, very young children have consistently been numbered among the casualties,” Unicef’s Somalia representative Gianfranco Rotigliano said in a statement. Somaliland announced its secession from the rest of Somalia following the overthrow of the government of president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, but has yet to attain international recognition. – AFP