Clashes between Ethiopian troops and Islamist insurgents have killed more than a dozen people in southern and central regions of Somalia, residents said.
Islamist fighters, opposed to Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia to support its interim government, ambushed a convoy of Ethiopian forces in the central Hiraan region on Wednesday, triggering an exchange of mortar bombs and machine-gun fire.
”Ethiopian troops killed four civilians and eight insurgents,” said resident Rage Osman.
But Islamist spokesperson Abdirahim Issa Adow told Reuters on Thursday that only two fighters had been killed, including a senior Mujahedin, and three wounded in the fighting.
”The enemy troops mercilessly killed many civilians after we attacked them because they treat all Somalis the same,” he said.
”We will carry on fighting the Ethiopians until they leave our country.”
Further south, residents in the Lower Shabelle region said at least seven people were killed in separate clashes between the two sides late on Wednesday after another Islamist ambush on an Ethiopian convoy.
”We had to flee the village because fighting spread to our side,” said witness Ali Diriye. ”We are now burying the seven who were killed.”
Somalia’s Western-backed government has largely failed to impose its authority on the Horn of Africa country since its forces and Ethiopian soldiers routed rival Islamist leaders at the end of 2006.
Although a senior commander of the armed wing of the sharia courts group was killed in a United States air strike last week, his al-Shabaab followers have vowed retaliation against the allied Somali-Ethiopian forces.
In a separate incident, a contracted driver for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was killed also on Wednesday at a checkpoint in northern Somalia after his 12-truck convoy was stopped by militiamen demanding money, the agency said.
”We condemn this senseless killing and once again urge all parties to ensure the safe passage of humanitarian staff and cargo across the country,” WFP Somalia country director Peter Goossens said in a statement.
He said the man was the second WFP-contracted driver to be killed this year. — Reuters