Somalia Fighting Kills 13 Civilians; African Union Plans to Bolster Force
At least 13 Somali civilians died and 40 were wounded in fighting between government forces and the Hisbul Islam militia, amid plans by the African Union to deploy 2,000 additional peacekeepers in the war-torn country.
Hisbul Islam carried out simultaneous attacks yesterday on the presidential palace in the north of the capital, Mogadishu, and an area in the south of the city known as Tarabunk junction, said Sheikh Mohamed Osman Arus, a spokesman for the group.
“We burned a government armored vehicle and we inflicted many loses,” Arus said in a phone interview today. “We have cleared out many enemy positions.”
Somalia’s Western-backed government has been battling insurgents, including Hisbul Islam and the al-Qaeda linked al- Shabaab movement, for the past three years.
Most of southern and central Somalia has been seized by the insurgents, while President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s administration controls only portions of Mogadishu, with support from African Union peacekeepers. The country hasn’t had a functioning central administration since the ouster of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
The AU plans to send 2,000 additional peacekeepers to Somalia to bolster its existing 6,100-strong force, a move welcomed by the United Nations as a sign that there is “heightened concern” at the continental body about the Somali conflict.
The deployment will take place within the next 40 days and troops will be airlifted by U.S., European Union and Algerian aircraft, Augustine Mahiga, the head of the UN Political Office for Somalia, said in a statement on the UN’s website yesterday.
Colonel Saed Abdi Hassan, a spokesman for the Somali government forces, said yesterday’s fighting lasted about half an hour.
“The terrorist elements attacked our positions but they lost many people in the battle,” Hassan said by phone from Mogadishu. “None of us were hurt in the battle.”
The casualties included women and children who were killed when a stray shell landed in the central Bakara market, said Ali Muse Sheikh, a paramedic for Nationlink and Lifeline Africa.
To contact the reporter on this story: Hamsa Omar in Mogadishu via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
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