MOGADISHU (Thomson Financial) – Shells and machinegun fire pounded the Somali capital today, setting buildings ablaze, as Ethiopian [Woyanne] forces and Islamist guerrillas battled for the ninth day.
After a night of sporadic shelling, columns of Ethiopian [Woyanne] tanks ploughed into northern Mogadishu, firing mortars and rockets onto suspected rebel positions, as machinegun fire ricocheted across neighbourhoods.
Terrified civilians scrambled to escape stray bullets as buildings caught fire.
At least six civilians were killed in northern neighbourhoods, residents said.
“I have seen the bodies of three civilians killed by stray bullets in Tawfiq,” said witness Abdullahi Ali Mohamed, trapped in the area.
Three other civilians were killed when a shell hit a passenger van in Suuqahoola, said witness Idle Abdi.
Residents said fighting had spread to the northern Ex-Control, Huriwa and Suuqahoola areas, threatening to engulf part of the city so far spared from weeks of artillery duels.
“The heaviest fighting is raging this morning. They are exchanging everything they have, from bullets to anti-aircraft shells,” said Salah Doli, a resident of Jamhuriha area, also in the north.
“Mortars have hit shops and buildings, destroying them and setting others ablaze,” he added.
Ethiopia [Woyanne] rejected allegations from human rights groups that its troops were targeting civilians, saying they had “taken every possible precaution to avoid or minimize civilian loss of life and civilian casualties.”
“Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops have never deliberately or knowingly targeted civilians, despite the current operational difficulties,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Local human rights workers monitoring the toll say at least 329 people, mostly civilians and insurgents, have been killed in the latest clashes that come around three weeks after similar battles claimed at least 1,000 lives.
Dozens of corpses remain rotting in the streets as the fighting has prevented aid workers from collecting them.
Mogadishu doctors have appealed for medical supplies for the wounded from some of the heaviest clashes in Mogadishu since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The United Nations says that more than 321,000 people had fled the seaside capital, home to about a million people, since Feb 1.
Many of the displaced are camped in the capital’s outskirts, facing disease outbreaks and without sufficient water, food and medicine, according to aid workers.
Alarmed by the looming humanitarian disaster, the UN has pleaded for access to bring aid to the displaced.
Meanwhile, London-based foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House warned yesterday that the Islamic Courts Union rulers, ousted from south and central Somalia by government-backed Ethiopian forces in January, were likely to rise again.