Islamist insurgents pounded Mogadishu on Monday in attacks that brought the death toll in the last 24 hours to at least 23 people, witnesses said.
The Somali rebels attacked two bases of African Union (AU) peacekeepers, shelled the city’s main airport and also struck government targets in the bustling Bakara market area.
Despite United Nations efforts to broker a peace deal, fighting has worsened this month in Somalia, where Islamists are battling the interim government and its Ethiopian military backers.
Merchants in Bakara market said they had counted 11 corpses from Monday’s latest fighting. Shells also landed in the morning around Mogadishu airport, where a commercial flight defied a ban by the militant al-Shabaab group to land.
Residents also said at least a dozen people had died in fighting on Sunday. ”A missile hit a neighbour’s house and killed nine people in the same family,” one resident, Farhiya Abdullahi, told Reuters of the worst incident.
Islamists launched an Iraq-style insurgency in early 2007 that has killed nearly 10Â 000 civilians and an unknown number of combatants. — Reuters