Grenades hurled by insurgents killed at least five Somalis around the capital’s main market, a witness said on Friday. Mohamed Abdulle Matan, one of the main traders at the Bakara market, said two soldiers were also wounded in the attack, a day after the government announced a major security crackdown on Islamic insurgents.
Mogadishu traders were dejectedly sifting through the charred remains of their shops on Thursday after a huge fire destroyed one-third of Bakara market, once the Somali capital’s main business hub. The vast market area and its intricate network of alleyways were completely disfigured by the fire.
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.
Somali rivals both claimed control of a disputed northern town on Tuesday after deadly clashes, and more fighting was feared. Tensions have been increasing in the normally calm north because of a border dispute between autonomous Puntland region and the breakaway republic of Somaliland.
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/ 23 September 2007
The United Nations’s new envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, held his first talks in Mogadishu on Saturday with the embattled transitional government’s top leaders, the UN said. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative discussed the results of a recent national reconciliation congress.
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/ 19 September 2007
An influential Somali radio station went off the air on Wednesday after two government soldiers threatened to pound the building with ”machine guns and anti-aircraft missiles”, the radio station’s director said. Shabelle radio shut down one day after police searching for insurgents opened fire outside the station, killing one person.
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/ 18 September 2007
Somali security forces surrounded the independent Shabelle radio station in Mogadishu on Tuesday after firing shots on the building, an Agence France-Presse correspondent reported. The incident came three days after police stormed the radio station, accusing one of its journalists of hurling a grenade at a police patrol and detaining 14 members of staff.
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/ 14 September 2007
Gun battles in Mogadishu killed at least six people early on Friday and residents said they feared Ramadan would bring no let up in a months-long insurgency that has battered the Somali capital.
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/ 13 September 2007
Somalia’s government on Thursday said a new opposition movement vowing war on Ethiopian troops in the Horn of Africa nation was a ”terrorist alliance” posing no real threat. Somali opposition figures forged the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia on Wednesday in a move analysts said may boost Islamist-led insurgents fighting the interim government.
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/ 7 September 2007
Gunmen killed two police officers in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where the embattled transitional government is facing a deadly insurgency, police said on Friday. The pair were killed overnight when insurgents ambushed a police patrol in northern Mogadishu’s Huriwa district, one of the most volatile zones in the lawless city, said police officer Abdulwahid Mohamed.
A Somali reconciliation conference aimed at ending 16 years of war and attended by thousands was due to wrap up on Thursday after six weeks of talks that were marred by relentless violence in Mogadishu. ”It was the first time such a large number of Somali delegates in favour of peace met,” said clan elder Bile Mohamud Qabowsade.
A wave of attacks killed a civilian and wounded five others in the Somali capital on Saturday, witnesses said, as Islamists vowed to wage a stronger insurgency to drive Ethiopian forces out. Insurgents overnight fired grenades at the Hotel Lafweyn where Somali National Reconciliation Congress delegates are staying.
Somali government security forces killed seven insurgents and lost of one their own in intense overnight clashes in the capital, Mogadishu, police said on Friday. ”The insurgents launched two separate attacks on our security forces and there were heavy exchanges of gunfire,” police spokesperson Abduwahid Mohamed said.
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.
Suspected insurgents shot dead a top elder from Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi’s clan overnight on Saturday in Mogadishu, a spokesperson for the premier’s office said. ”Moalim Harun Moalim Yusuf was one of the prominent Somali clan chiefs,” Abdullahi Mohieddin Odka said.
Uganda announced plans on Thursday to send 250 more soldiers to bolster a peacekeeping mission in Mogadishu plagued by the failure of other African nations to commit troops to Somalia. Uganda sent 1Â 600 men to the Somali capital in March as the vanguard of a planned 8Â 000-strong African Union force.
Gunmen shot dead a popular Somali radio journalist and talk-show host outside his independent FM station on Saturday in an apparent assassination, colleagues said. Mahad Ahmed Elmi’s broadcasts on Horn Afrik radio had upset both the government and Islamist insurgents. There was no indication as to who had killed him.
At least one Somali died Friday as heavy fighting broke out in the capital Mogadishu between insurgents and the Ethiopian-backed government forces, police and witnesses said. An Agence France-Presse reporter in Mogadishu described the clashes as among the most intense since April.
Mohamed Hussein heard the grenade explode and he froze. He knew what was coming next, because he has been through it before: gunfire coming from every direction as soldiers frantically tried to kill the person who had thrown the weapon. When the shots finally stopped, Hussein saw four bloodied corpses, all of them civilians.
The United Nations envoy to Somalia on Tuesday went to Mogadishu in a bid to rejuvenate peace talks that have been clouded by a deadly insurgency. Francois Lonseny Fall told more than 1Â 000 delegates at a peace conference there was international backing for the new initiative to restore stability to Somalia, which has been torn apart by clan and religious warfare.
At least eight people were killed in attacks in southern and central Somalia, during which four people were also wounded, witnesses said on Tuesday. In a one-hour gun battle between 40 heavily armed insurgents and government soldiers in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, two men and a four year-old child were killed, said Abdi Mo’alin Mohamed, a clan elder.
Somalis are still streaming out of the violent capital, Mogadishu, with the amount of those fleeing outnumbering the ones returning, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on Monday as daily attacks continue to convulse the city of one million.
A major Somali peace meeting resumed in Mogadishu on Thursday, hours after explosions echoed in the capital’s biggest market in the heaviest fighting in 15 days of non-stop violence. ”The conference has started. Prime Minister [Ali Mohamed] Gedi has arrived. The explosions will not deter us,” a security source said.
Peace talks due to start in Somalia this week were overshadowed by a grenade attack in a Mogadishu market that killed at least three people on Wednesday. The attack caused chaos at the Bakara market a day before the opening of the peace meeting, already adjourned from the weekend in a climate of violence.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) called for a donation of ,5-million on Tuesday to safeguard war-weary Somalis from an expected crop failure. ”The people of Somalia have been hit by drought and floods last year and now insecurity and new displacements,” said Peter Goossens, WFP’s Somalia country director.
Attackers targeting Somali police and government soldiers killed at least four people in Mogadishu on Monday, witnesses said, a day after mortar attacks punctuated the opening of a much-delayed peace meeting. In one incident, grenades were lobbed at police patrolling the central Bakara market.
Troops stepped up security across the Somali capital on Saturday after Islamists threatened to disrupt this weekend’s peace conference, saying anyone who takes part ”is sentenced to death”. The threat came from the Shabab, the militant wing of an Islamic group that ruled much of southern Somalia for six months last year.
After a months-long delay, the latest Somali peace conference is due to start in Mogadishu on Sunday but hopes of a breakthrough remain low amid raging violence and a boycott by key players. The conference was called by the transitional federal government after it defeated an Islamist movement with the help of Ethiopia in January.
Several explosions ripped through Mogadishu’s sprawling Bakara Market on Tuesday, killing two people in a fifth straight day of violence in the area. Somalia’s interim government says Bakara, one of the world’s biggest open-air arms markets, is a stronghold of Islamist insurgents it blames for almost daily guerrilla attacks.
Insurgents threw grenades at Somali government soldiers in Mogadishu’s Bakara market on Sunday, and the troops responded by firing their weapons indiscriminately, witnesses said. It was the second straight day of attacks in Bakara, famed as the site of one of the world’s biggest open-air arms markets
A landmine hidden in a box exploded in a livestock market in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Friday, killing five children who were playing football and wounding at least 10 others, witnesses said. Eyewitness Abdirizaq Sheikh said the blast at a livestock market ”shook the earth”.
Somali gunmen shot dead a senior government official in a troubled Mogadishu district and a teenager died when munitions left behind by African Union peacekeepers exploded, officials said on Tuesday. The seaside capital has witnessed an upsurge in attacks by insurgents targeting interim government officials.