At least two people were killed and six wounded on Friday when rival gunmen clashed in the temporary home of Somalia’s largely powerless transitional government, witnesses said.
The fighting, which appeared unrelated to months of fierce battles between Islamists and a United States-backed warlord alliance for control of the capital, Mogadishu, erupted after a dispute over a checkpoint in the town.
”So far, two people have been killed and six others wounded,” said Abdullahi Osman, a retired military officer who lives in Baidoa, about 250km north-west of Mogadishu.
”We believe the casualty figures may be much higher,” he said.
The two sides pounded each other with heavy machine gun fire after arguing over who controls the checkpoint near the warehouse that houses Parliament, they said.
Such battles are common among lawless Somalia’s many clan and freelance militia as the roadblocks are a major source of income.
The fighting pitted gunmen loyal to transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed against those of a militia commander from the Raharwein clan that dominates Somalia’s Bay and Bakol regions, where Baidoa is, witnesses said.
Most of Yusuf’s gunmen come from the northern region of Puntland, where he was a warlord before the Somali Parliament elected him president in October 2004 after more than two years of peace talks in neighbouring Kenya.
The government is temporarily based in Baidoa due to insecurity in the capital, which has been the scene of bloody fighting between the Islamists and the warlords since February, in which nearly 350 people have been killed.
The government has been wracked by infighting and unable to exert control across vast swathes of the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, which was plunged into chaos with the 1991 ousting of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre. — AFP
