Rival militiamen battled for control of a district in the lawless Somali capital on Sunday and at least seven people were killed, medical workers said.
Fighting began after militias loyal to an alliance of warlords-turned-Cabinet ministers and businessmen deployed in a house in the Hamarweyne district of central Mogadishu. Residents and allied militiamen objected to the move, saying it occurred without their consent, triggering a gunfight, said resident Abdallah Yusuf.
Doctors at the Medina Hospital said at least seven people were killed and six others had been wounded.
Somalia has had no effective government since 1991, when warlords ousted a dictatorship and then turned on each other, carving the nation of an estimated 8,2-million people into a patchwork of fiefdoms. A transitional federal government that was formed following peace talks in neighbouring Kenya is struggling to assert its authority.
Islamic fighters are seeking to boost the power of a group of fundamentalist clerics who have been trying to assert themselves as a military and political force in the country.
Seeking to curb the clerics’ growing power, some warlords and businessmen formed an armed coalition, the Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism.
The alliance deployed militiamen in Hamarweyne on Saturday as they, and the radical Islamic militia force, prepared to fight for control of Mogadishu by recruiting fighters, fortifying positions and deploying weapons and combatants.
Hamarweyne’s residents were afraid that the presence of the militia would invite attacks on the area if the larger war begins, according to self-styled district commissioner Abdullahi Ibrahim Sahal.
The chairperson of the Islamic Courts Union, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, said his fighters would back the district’s militia if his rivals did not withdraw from the area. – Sapa-AP