Rival sub-clans fought over access to wells in central Somalia on Saturday, killing at least 20 people and wounding several others, elders said, as the countryside sank into a vortex of violence. Also on Saturday, two people were killed and four others wounded in the capital, Mogadishu, in a fresh spate of insurgent attacks.
Hundreds of Ethiopian troops entered the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Monday, witnesses said, after four days of heavy fighting with Islamist rebels that left scores dead and forced thousands to flee. The worst fighting in Mogadishu in more than 15 years was triggered by an Ethiopian offensive last week.
Angry crowds burned the bodies of two dead soldiers in Mogadishu on Wednesday, where fighting claimed some 14 lives, while the Somali Islamist leader defended the capital’s bloody insurgency. Exchanges of heavy weapons fire across southern Mogadishu killed six uniformed soldiers and eight civilians.
Heavy fighting erupted on Wednesday in the Somali capital, killing at least 14 people in an escalation of violence that also saw angry residents attacking the bodies of dead soldiers. Residents burned the bodies of two soldiers and dragged another through the streets, recalling the similar fate of United States troops in a failed peace operation in the early 1990s.
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/ 16 February 2007
Dodging bombs and bullets may be routine for many Mogadishu residents, but a surge in violent crime in the Somali capital is compounding the years of misery of a war-weary people. Increasing incidents of rape, robbery and carjacking in the Horn of Africa city pose an unfamiliar threat to many residents.
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/ 11 February 2007
At least eight people were killed and several others wounded on Saturday in mortar and grenade attacks in an escalation of guerrilla-style attacks in the Somali capital, witnesses said. Assailants fired several mortar shells at a crowded market in the south of the city, killing three people and wounding several others.
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/ 19 January 2007
Somalis expressed growing fears of a relapse into violence on Friday as the African Union met to discuss the troubled deployment of a stabilisation force. Visiting United Nations envoy Francois Fall told interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Thursday Somalia had a better chance of peace than at any other time since the era of infighting among warlords began 16 years ago.
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/ 14 January 2007
Distorted woofers blare out Britney Spears tracks, noisy hawkers are back and deafening gunfire is frequent: the familiar chaos has made a swift return after Mogadishu’s brief brush with Islamist rule. It is back to business as usual for residents of the Indian Ocean city.
The United States launched air strikes on suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in Somalia in its first overt military intervention in the lawless nation since the early 1990s, officials said on Tuesday. The Interim Somali president defended Washington’s targeting of the camps where suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in East Africa are believed to be.
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Monday arrived in the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time since he was elected in 2004 while his Ethiopia-backed government struggles to exert authority over the city. Yusuf was welcomed at the capital’s main airport by Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi under tight security.