Friday, June 06, 2008
Rival sides pounded each other with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades around Heylebarise army base in northern Mogadishu, Huriwa neighbourhood, they said.
"I saw three civilians killed in the clashes -- two of them were caught in the crossfire and another one was hit by an artillery shell inside a house," said Adan Ibrahim Dhagol. He said seven other civilians were wounded.
Another Ahmed Yaqub said two other civilians were killed in the clashes.
"The fighting was too heavy, I saw two people killed in the crossfire, one of them was a woman," he added.
Islamist spokesman Sheikh Mohamoud Ibrahim Suley claimed that five Ethiopian soldiers were killed in the fighting.
"Our fighters attacked the enemy base in northern Mogadishu and killed five of them," he told AFP. There was no independent confirmation of the Ethiopian fatalities.
Islamist insurgents have carried out a string of attacks recently across the Horn of Africa country.
The Islamic Courts Union took over Mogadishu and large swathes of the country from US-backed warlords in 2006, briefly imposing a strict form of Sharia law, banning music and cinemas.
They were ousted last year by Ethiopian-backed Somali government troops but its remnants have since waged a deadly guerrilla war.
Source: AFP, June 06, 2008