By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 09, 2007
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Heavy fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian troops backing Somalia's shaky government killed more than 40 people and wounded 50 others in the past 24 hours, witnesses and doctors said Friday.
Ethiopian troops based at the former defense ministry in the south of the capital killed eight civilians early Friday when they fired tank shells into the main Bakara market, Khalif Haji Muse told The Associated Press, adding that two others died when Ethiopian snipers fired at them.
The bodies of 34 people, among them four women and six Ethiopians, were found in the northern and southern parts of the capital, where intensive fighting took place a day earlier, witnesses said.
The fighting was sparked when Ethiopian troops tried on Thursday afternoon to retrieve the body of one of their soldiers who was killed in earlier skirmishes in the south of the city and dragged through the streets of the capital, witnesses said.
Ethiopian troops based at the former prisons guard building fired tank shells into the north of the city, hitting the livestock market, which is seen as a hotbed of supporters of Islamic insurgents battling the Somali government and their Ethiopian allies, said local resident Abdiaziz Mohamed Guled.
On Thursday, hundreds of protesters - mainly women and children - chanting anti-Ethiopian slogans dragged the body of an Ethiopian soldier left behind by his fleeing colleagues.
The soldier was one of two Ethiopian soldiers and a Somali killed earlier Thursday in heavy fighting sparked when hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers from two nearby military bases began patrols in the north eastern Hurwa neighborhood.
Doctors at Medina and Keysaney hospitals said they have received 50 civilians with gunshot wounds.
Sporadic gunfire could be heard in the north and south of the capital and Somali government troops are patrolling some of the streets, residents said. But no substantial fighting was reported Friday morning.
Thousands of Somalis have been killed this year in fighting between Ethiopian troops supporting the shaky U.N.-backed government and Islamic insurgents. The Islamic group was chased from power by the Ethiopians last December after it had taken control of much of Mogadishu and southern Somalia.
On Wednesday, the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said the fighting had grown so bad that civilians who were shot or hit by shrapnel during the night frequently bled to death because the violence cut them off from the hospitals.
The impoverished Horn of Africa nation has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator and then turned on each other.
Source: AP, Nov 09, 2007