Heavy fighting resumed on Friday in the Somali capital of
Mogadishu as thousands of civilians fleeing the city streamed the
streets.
"We are escaping with our children to wherever we can get
security," Mogadishu resident Yusuf Diriye told Xinhua, adding that
all his neighbors in Wardigley district of Mogadishu have fled the
city.
The fighting on Thursday, the fiercest since the Somali
transitional government retook Mogadishu last December, claimed the
lives of nearly 30 people and wounded more than 100 others, most of
them civilians.
Also on Friday, an attack helicopter belonging to Ethiopian
forces has been shot down as it was flying over Mogadishu, the
local Shabelle radio reported.
Witnesses were quoted as saying the helicopter was hit by an
anti-aircraft rocket around 12:10 PM local time (09:10 GMT) and it
crashed as it landed at the airport. Another Ethiopian helicopter
escaped to be shot down, the radio said.
Ethiopian helicopters launch air attacks at insurgent targets in
Mogadishu on Thursday.
The latest violence came only a week after a ceasefire signed
between Hawiye clan elders and Ethiopian troops led to a relative
calm in the restive Somali capital.
The Somali government has pledged to pacify the city in time for
the national reconciliation congress to be held in Mogadishu on
April 16.
The Somali Parliament based in Baidoa, a town 250 km south of
Mogadishu, has voted unanimously to relocate the cabinet to
Mogadishu earlier this month.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991,
when warlords overthrew former ruler Mohamed Siad Barre and then
turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy.
The transitional government was formed in 2004 with UN help, but
has little authority across the country because it has no real army
or police force.
(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2007)
