MOGADISHU, Somalia — Hundreds of Somali government troops attacked insurgent-held positions north and south of the capital on Friday and the heart of the city was heavily shelled, witnesses said. One said a busload of fleeing civilians was hit.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Hundreds of Somali government troops attacked insurgent-held positions north and south of the capital on Friday and the heart of the city was heavily shelled, witnesses said. One said a busload of fleeing civilians was hit.
Shelling was heavy on a major north-south route through the city, Wadnaha Road, which the Islamic fighters took earlier this month, area resident Abdi Haji said. It is one of the four main roads in the capital, Mogadishu.
Friday’s surge in fighting, following a few days’ lull in a strong insurgent advance on Mogadishu, has killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens, residents and an independent radio station said.
Resident Abdullahi Mohamud Sugow said he saw the bus shelled in the Hawl Wadag district.
"It was grisly scene. I can’t tell you anything more," he said, before hanging up the phone.
Pictures of the fighting showed gunmen crouched behind the ruins of shell-pocked buildings and bodies lying in the streets. In one photo, a man clutches a wounded child to his chest in the back of a car, his shirt reddened with the blood streaming from the child’s face. In another, a man’s lower jaw has been torn away by a bullet or piece of shrapnel.
Editor Abdirahman Yusuf Al-Adala of the independent ratio station Shabelle Media Network also said a stray bullet killed journalist Abdirisaq Warsame Mohamed as he headed to work.
The Islamist insurgents are attempting to dislodge the U.N.-backed government from the few blocks of the capital it still controls. But the government is supported by 4,350 African Union peacekeepers, who are helping hold key installations such as the port, the airport and the presidential palace.
Government commander-in-chief Lt. Yusuf Osman Dumal said the fighting Friday began when Islamists attacked government positions. But residents said the government used the temporary respite to reinforce and re-equip the troops under its control and that it appeared to be a planned government offensive.
Defense Minister Mohamed Abdi Gandi said the government launched the attack "to defend its people and defeat its opponents."
"We have captured new bases. We have conquered areas controlled by rebel groups," he said at a news conference in the capital. "We will continue the offensive against the rebels until we impose our authority all over the country."
But insurgents said they had repelled the government forces.
"The so-called government has attacked our bases. We have beaten them back, and they retreated to their former stations," a spokesman for the insurgent Islamic Party, Muse Abdi Arale, said.
The United Nations reports that around 49,000 residents have fled the fighting in the capital, and the humanitarian situation is dire. Many families live without access to food or water under trees or by the side of roads sheltered by nothing more than a few scraps of plastic.
On Wednesday, regional leaders reaffirmed their support for the beleaguered government and said more support was needed for the AU peacekeeping mission.
Somalia has been torn apart by fighting since warlords overthrew a socialist dictator in 1991. The arid Horn of Africa nation is now controlled by clan warlords and criminal militias and wracked by a civil war between Islamist insurgents backed by Eritrea and a precarious new U.N.-backed government struggling to assert its control.
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