Latest Violence in Mogadishu Leaves 8 Civilians Dead

Armed Militants

There is uneasy calm in the Somali capital, Mogadishu 8 civilians including women and children were killed and dozens wounded in the lawless Mogadishu during exchange of artillery shells between Somali government troops and Islamist rebels on Sunday evening. Eye witnesses and medical sources confirmed the deaths of eight civilians including two women and four children in three villages of the Huruwaa district in the north east of the capital Mogadishu where government forces fired artilleries in reaction to extremists who fired mortars from the district toward presidential palace.

Mogadishu has seen uneasy calmness on Saturday after Friday’s bloody clashes that engulfed the lives of at least 15 people including two Islamist fighters, but residents in the city were once again shocked by the sounds of artillery and mortar shells which could be heard throughout the city and its outskirts. The head of Mogadishu’s local ambulance service Ali Muse Sheik told reporters that his team collected 20 wounded civilians from three villages in the Huruwaa district, a militant hotbed in the northeast of the city. “Our staff also confirmed the deaths of eight people including women and children who were cut into pieces” Ali Muse said during media briefing on Sunday evening.

Fighting in Somali capital displaced more than 1.5 million people and killed 20,000 others mainly civilians since early 2007 when AU peacekeepers were deployed into the city to protect the fragile world-backed government from extremist rebels with ties to Osama Bin Laden’s Al qaeda Network. Somalia hasn’t had a functioning central government since 1991, when warlords toppled former military government of the late General Moamed Siyad Barre and then turned on each other for a dirty power struggle

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