Apr 21, 2007 7:00 pm US/Eastern
Fighting Kills At Least 52 People In Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) ―
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Ethiopian forces entered Somalia last year to help expel an Islamist movement rivaling the country's interim government. (File)
AP
Heavy fighting in the Somali capital killed at least 52 people and left 120 wounded in a single day, a human rights group and hospital officials said.
Islamic insurgents, who are based in residential areas, battled Ethiopian troops in the southern and northern districts of Mogadishu. Hundreds of people fled the violence on foot or piled into trucks, and hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties.
Many of the Islamic insurgents are masked and fire shoulder-held rocket launchers or Kalashnikov assault rifles. They also use pickups mounted with machine-guns.
Ethiopian soldiers, who are in Mogadishu to back Somalia's fragile government, normally fight from public spaces such as street junctions or government buildings, firing long-range mortars.
They also use tanks and machine guns.
An Associated Press cameraman saw 11 bodies on the streets as he passed through Mogadishu's southern districts to get to the main airport. Some of the bodies were missing legs or heads. At one point during the journey, a mortar hit the vehicle in front of his, but everyone survived the blast.
Somalia's Elman Human Rights Organization said Mogadishu residents, hospital workers and human rights workers told it that at least 52 civilians had been killed and an unknown number wounded Saturday.
Several hospital sources told The Associated Press they had received at least 120 wounded from Saturday's fighting. They spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
The new tallies bring the death toll in four days of fighting in Mogadishu to at least 165, with more than 229 wounded, according to the human rights group.
Saturday's violence is the worst in recent years, said Sudan Ali Ahmed, the chairman of the Elman Human Rights Organization.
"I call on the both sides to stop the fighting and shelling without any condition," to save civilian lives, Ahmed told the AP by telephone.
The UN refugee agency says that 321,000 people have fled Mogadishu since February because of the violence.
An AP reporter could hear from his house the boom of mortar shells that Ethiopian troops fired from the nearby presidential palace in the direction of northern Mogadishu, which seems to be the main battlefield between the two sides.
One radio station, HornAfrik, was hit by a mortar and went off the air. A reporter and a technician were injured, said Abdullahi Kulmiye, a colleague.
Residents fled their single-story homes to seek shelter on the ground floors of taller buildings, believing that the higher roofs would take the brunt of damage from mortar shells that pounded their neighborhoods, said Aden Mohamed, a former banker who had sought refuge in such a home.
Others had little to shelter themselves with. An Associated Press cameraman saw a man hiding from the shells under a tree.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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