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More than 80 die in Mogadishu fighting -- rights group
by Abdi Sheikh and Aweys Yusuf
Reuters North American News Service
Apr 20, 2008 10:33 EST
MOGADISHU, April 20 (Reuters) -- Somali Islamist insurgents and
government troops exchanged mortar fire on Sunday and a prominent human
rights group said 81 people had been killed in the past 24 hours in some
of the heaviest clashes in months.
The fighting was fiercest in the Islamist stronghold of northern
Mogadishu where the government and its Ethiopian allies are trying to
flush out the remnants of a sharia courts movement ousted from the
capital at the end of 2006.
"Eighty-one people were killed and 119 were wounded in the violence in
Mogadishu since Saturday," Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairman of the Elman Peace
and Human Rights Organisation, told Reuters by telephone.
He said he had collated the death toll from local hospitals, undercover
activists counting bodies in the street and families.
There was no independent verification of the death toll, but residents
had re****ted escalating clashes since Saturday.
"We condemn the unceasing fighting and the use of artillery on the
civilian population," Ahmed said. "We also condemn the opposition groups
who fight among the civilians and use them as (human) ****elds."
His group estimates that 6,500 people were killed last year in Somalia's
conflict and 1.5 million uprooted from their homes.
The interim administration is struggling to contain a deepening
Islamist-led insurgency involving near-daily attacks on allied
Somali-Ethiopian troops.
The Islamists have also carried out an increasing number of hit-and-run
attacks on towns -- seizing control from local administrations that
often amount to little more than militias, only to melt away before
government reinforcements arrive.
HEAVY FIGHTING
Residents said the two sides had strengthened their positions overnight
and exchanged heavy fire in the early hours of Sunday around the Save
Our Souls (SOS) Hospital.
"A mortar shell landed on a house just behind SOS hospital, killing an
old man and seriously wounding his wife and her 3 children," said a
medical worker who declined to be named.
"As we were running to help this family we saw an unidentified dead man
lying on the ground," he added.
Health workers in various hospitals said they were treating scores of
patients wounded in the fighting.
One witness said he saw the bodies of four men near the main livestock
market, adding that no one had dared to take the bodies away "because
the whole place is under Ethiopian siege."
Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein expressed regret for Somalis forced to
flee the violence but said his interim government and its Ethiopian
allies had the right to self-defence.
"I am very sorry for the poor civilians who evacuate when fighting takes
place," he told a news conference.
"The government of Somalia is always ready for peace, but if our troops
and Ethiopian troops are attacked, fighting with any group that is
against peace will be inevitable." (Additional re****ting by Mohamed
Abdi; writing by Katie Nguyen; editing by Tim Pearce)
(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top
issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/
)
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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