Heavy Fighting Kills 13 in Somali Capital

"Heavy Fighting Kills 13 in Somali Capital

by Derek Kilner
Nairobi
24 September 2008""

At least 13 civilians have been killed and as many as 40 wounded in fighting between Islamist insurgents and African Union peacekeepers in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. As Derek Kilner reports from VOA's East Africa bureau in Nairobi, the fighting was sparked when Islamists attacked the peacekeepers' base in the south of the city on Tuesday evening.

Somali child sits on a cart as the family leaves Mogadishu, 24 Sep 2008

Ugandan peacekeepers responded to the attack with heavy weapons and tanks. Residents described shells falling on residential areas of Mogadishu, and many people fled the city on Wednesday.

The fighting follows clashes on Monday that killed some 30 people in the city's main market area.

Zacharia Mohamed Abdi, a spokesman for a hard-line faction of the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia, an Islamist opposition group based in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, blamed Ugandan peacekeepers for attacking Somali civilians.

An estimated 9,000 civilians have been killed by fighting in Somalia since the latest insurgency began in early 2007, and some one million displaced, in what the U.N. has called Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.

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Also see: Somalia: Worse Than Darfur