Clashes in central Somalia and the capital have killed at least 46 people, officials and peace groups said on Thursday, while a newly appointed security minister pledged to build strong national security forces.
Meanwhile, the African Union (AU) said it was investigating a mystery illness that had killed three Burundian peacekeepers based in Somalia. Eighteen more were in a Kenyan hospital with the same symptoms, an AU official said.
Neither insurgents nor the interim government and its allies have been able to gain the upper hand in sporadic fighting in central Somalia and the seaside capital, Mogadishu.
A two-year insurgency against Somalia’s Western-backed government has killed about 18Â 000 people and displaced a million more in a nation that has been without central rule since 1991.
The government is hemmed into a few blocks of the capital.
In the central towns of Wabho and Mahas, clashes between al-Shabaab militants and the moderate Islamist group Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca have killed 31 people since Wednesday, according to the local Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation.
”Eighteen people, mainly militias, died in [Thursday’s] fighting near Wabho village. Thirteen died in clashes on Wednesday in Mahas. The total wounded … is 63 in both areas,” said the group’s deputy Ali Yasin Gedi.
Al Shabaab — seen by Western security services as al Qaeda’s proxy in the Horn of Africa nation — controls large swathes of south and central Somalia.
At least 15 people were killed and 53 wounded in heavy fighting in three districts of Mogadishu late on Wednesday, according to Ali Muse from the Life Line ambulance service.
There was a lull in fighting late on Thursday. — Reuters