About 30 people were killed and hundreds displaced north of Mogadishu in three days of clashes between rival gunmen, reports said yesterday.
Heavy fighting in the capital’s Abdul Aziz district yesterday left at least 15 people dead and 25 wounded. An Agence France Presse reporter at the scene of the clashes said fighting was fiercer yesterday than the previous two days and had spread well beyond its original flashpoint.
“Seven people died in hospital in Mogadishu and four bodies were collected from the battle zone in Abdul Aziz district. About 25 people have been wounded,” a Somali nurse told AFP.
Elders said four more people died later. Most of the casualties were civilians, the nurse added. “Wheelbarrows were used as ambulances, carrying the wounded to hospital,” another nurse, Ahmed Abdullahi Yassin, said. Militia sources said the toll could be much higher.
Attempts last night to mediate a cease-fire failed, but yesterday afternoon, prominent elder Mahmoud Ali launched another round of talks to stop the fighting involving the Abgal clan. “If the mediation efforts fail today, the fighting is likely to involve other clans,” an elder said.
The fighting erupted on Monday afternoon after a lone gunmen opened fire on a passing motorist near the capital’s Global Hotel, prompting the hotel’s guards to fire back. The latest clashes are part of other violations of a cease-fire signed by various Somali faction leaders in Kenya in October 2002.
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Inter-clan fighting in the southwestern town of Bulo Hawa has displaced about 3,500 people, press reports said. The town is located near the border with Kenya. According to reports, most displaced people have crossed over into the Kenyan border town of Mandera.
About seven people were killed and a dozen wounded in the fighting, which broke out on Sunday.
The fighting between the two sub-clans was over who should run the town. Humanitarian sources said Bulo Hawa hospital was looted during the fighting and most of the patients and staff have left.
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Faction leader Mahmud Sayid Adan has said a group of Somali leaders will rejoin the peace talks in Kenya as requested by regional mediators. Adan was one of the faction leaders who walked out of the talks and have threatened to hold separate talks inside the country. The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an East African body, is sponsoring the Somali talks.
Adan said his group had suspended preparations for convening its own talks and was ready to rejoin the IGAD-sponsored talks. “Now that IGAD has met some of our demands, we are 90 percent sure that we will be there. We were encouraged by the May 6-7 IGAD ministerial meeting, which showed unity within IGAD about the conference,” he said.
The IGAD ministerial meeting called for a consultative meeting with all Somali leaders on May 20 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to expedite the peace process. The ministers declared that the Somali peace process should come to a successful conclusion latest by the end of July.
An IGAD source close to the talks, said: “We expect a good majority of those leaders who left to return before the next IGAD ministerial meeting on May 20.”
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Two journalists working for a local radio station in Jowhar, 90 km north of Mogadishu, have been released after being arrested by armed men last week, media reports said. Abshir Ali and Abdighani Sheikh Muhammad said they were arrested on the orders of local leaders who were unhappy with a report that was aired about the Somali peace process.
“We were picked up from our premises on Thursday morning by security officers. The local leaders had taken exception to a report we carried on Wednesday about the peace talks in Kenya. ... This was pure intimidation of the independent press,” Ali told reporters. The radio went off the air in protest until the two were released.
