AFP - Three killed as heavy fighting rocks Somali capital

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Islamist-led insurgents clashed Sunday with Somali government troops in northern Mogadishu in some of the heaviest fighting in weeks, witnesses said, as three people died in attacks in the capital.

The upsurge in violence comes three days after Somalia's new Islamist-dominated opposition alliance said its forces had launched a bid to oust Ethiopian troops from battle-scarred Horn of Africa nation.

Rival sides pounded each other with machineguns, rocket propelled grenades and anti-aircraft rockets around Mogadishu University and Barakat Cemetery, witnesses added.

"I saw around 50 heavily-armed insurgents attacking the government forces near the university and then fighting started," said Mohamed Ganey, who lives in the city's north.

"I then saw smoke rising to the sky from the battlefield. They were exchanging machinegun fire, RPGs, anti-aircraft rockets for quite sometimes," said Ganey, adding the insurgents "were chanting Allahu Akbar (God is Great)."

Another resident Abdullahi Hassan Ali said the artillery duel was "heaviest" in recent weeks in Mogadishu, home to about one million.

"It is face-to-face fighting and not like ambushes in the past," Ali told AFP.

On Thursday, the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) vowed to drive out Ethiopian forces deployed in Somalia to bolster the feeble government after.

The ARS -- a coalition of all anti-government forces -- was formed on September 12 to liberate Somalia.

Earlier Sunday, three people, including a policeman, were killed in the seaside capital, the latest victims from a string of attacks that have convulsed the city.

Gunmen shot an unidentified man in Mogadishu's violence-wracked Bakara market area, witness Abdullahi Mohamed told AFP.

"The assailants managed to escape after killing the man," he said.

Witnesses said a teenager killed a civilian in the city's Sanaa neighbourhood. A policeman was gunned down in the Suq Baad neighbourhood by unidentified gunmen, according to locals.
The interim government claims the insurgency is waning but lawless pockets still remain in Mogadishu.

Ethiopia's army came to the rescue of the government last year and in April wrested final control of Mogadishu from an Islamist militia that briefly controlled large parts of the country.
The remnants of the fundamentalist Islamic group and its tribal allies have since reverted to street guerrilla tactics, carrying out daily hit-and-run attacks against government targets in the capital.

The Ethiopian and Somali forces as well as at least 1,500 African Union peacekeepers from Uganda have been unable to stem the insurgency that threatens to paralyse the government.
At least 80 people have been killed in the flashpoint area of Bakara market alone since June, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on reports by hospital sources.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre touched off a deadly clan-based power struggle that has defied numerous efforts to restore stability.

Mogadishu violence has raged despite a recent government-sponsored reconciliation conference, which was boycotted by Islamist-led Somali opposition groups, and ended with nothing to speak of.

Source: AFP