Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Three people were killed in Mogadishu -- where most of the fighting has taken place in recent months -- but two more died in a rare attack in the southern coastal town of Kismayo.
Officials and witnesses said nine other people were wounded in Kismayo when a roadside bomb targeting an Ethiopian officer went off in the town.
"We are still investigating who planted the roadside bomb that killed two people and wounded at least nine," deputy district commissioner Ahmed Abdi Omar said.
The victims were bystanders but the fate of the Ethiopian target was not immediately clear. The latest attack of note in Kismayo took place on June 1, when a senior security official was gunned down.
Violence also struck Mogadishu overnight as civilians continued to bear the brunt of the conflict.
"I heard gunfire outside my house and when I went out I saw three dead civilians," a resident of the capital's southern Bulo Hubey neighbourhood told AFP. "I'm not sure who is behind the killing," he added.
The incident took place near a base used by government forces.
"The government forces reached the area and sealed it off, barring people from coming close to the bodies," said Hasan Warsame, another witness.
In further overnight violence, insurgents launched an attack against a police station in the southern district of Holwadag, witnesses and security sources said.
"It was late when the insurgents launched an attack against our station in Holwadag. Our forces repelled them and we killed two of the insurgents while one of our men was injured," police spokesman Abdulwahid Mohamed told AFP.
In a statement posted on the official website of the Shabab -- the military wing of Somalia's Islamist movement which has spearheaded the insurgency -- it claimed six policemen were killed in the attack.
"The young Islamic warriors (Shabab) attacked a police station sheltering Somali traitors and six of them were killed while four others were wounded. Two of our mujahedin (fighters) were martyred," the statement said.
Ethiopia's mighty army came to the rescue of Somalia's embattled transitional government last year to defeat an Islamist militia that briefly controled large parts of the country and strictly enforced Islamic law.
Since the alliance wrested final control of Mogadishu from the Islamists in April the capital has been plagued by almost daily guerrilla attacks.
On Tuesday, a leader for the Shabab -- Sheikh Mukhtar Robow -- vowed jihad (holy war) against what he described as Ethiopia's bid to colonise Somalia and convert people to Christianity.
The violence comes against a tense political backdrop, with the interim government under pressure to implement decisions made at a clan reconciliation conference in August that failed to surmount bitter divisions.
Source: AFP, Oct 10, 2007