Sunday, September 06, 2009
The clashes broke out late Saturday, moments after the embattled Somali transitional federal government's foreign minister announced that his administration was engaged in direct contacts with the rebels.
The worst incident occurred overnight when a mortar shell smashed through a house, killing five members of the same family, several of them children, residents said.
"Most of this family was killed or seriously injured," Ali Muse, head of Mogadishu ambulance services, told AFP.
"We also collected 19 other injured civilians from several locations in Mogadishu and one of them died on the way to the hospital," he added.
Witnesses said the heavy exchanges of gun and mortar fire in residential neighbourhoods was particularly devastating because families were gathered for the meal breaking the dawn-to-dusk fast of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
On Saturday, Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Jama had claimed that President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was engaged in reconciliation talks with the two main insurgent groups in a bid to end a deadly spiral of violence.
"The government maintains its plans for reconciliation and we have started talking to the rebel groups of Hezb al-Islam and the Shebab," he said.
There was no reaction to his claim by senior officials from either group.
The Shebab, an Al-Qaeda-inspired group, and the more political Hezb al-Islam movement launched a military offensive in the capital and parts of southern and central Somalia on May 7.
Hundreds of people, including many civilians, have died in four months of intense fighting in Mogadishu and tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes.
Source: AFP, September 6, 2009