Fierce clashes erupted in Mogadishu between Ethiopian-backed Somali forces and Islamist fighters, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy casualties, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday.
The overnight fighting was focused around the former Defence Ministry building in southern Mogadishu and resulted in a fire in Bakara market, where the Islamist insurgents often ambush police patrols.
Sheikh Mukhtar Robo Abu Mansur, the commander of the Shabab movement in Mogadishu, told Agence France-Presse by phone that his fighters had killed 12 Somali soldiers and five Ethiopians.
Robo, a senior figure in the Islamist movement that was ousted from power by a joint Ethiopian-Somali force in January, accused the government forces of deliberately shelling Bakara market in a bid to destroy property.
Somali police spokesperson Abduwahid Mohamed rejected Robo’s account, saying government forces had killed 13 insurgents and lost only one soldier.
“The insurgents attacked the government bases … but they lost the battle,” Mohamed said.
Insurgent attacks in Mogadishu have increased since an Islamist-dominated opposition group, formed last month in Eritrea, vowed to drive Ethiopian troops out of Somalia.
The Shabab are extremist elements of the Islamist movement that controlled much of southern and central Somalia during the second half of 2006.
Separately in Mogadishu, three gunmen shot and killed the son of prominent elder of the powerful Hawiye clan, which is dominant in the capital.
“They shot him twice in the back and escaped. He died instantly,” said Hassan Mohamed Afka, a witness.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, touching off a deadly clan-based power struggle that has defied numerous efforts to restore stability. — AFP