Sunday, May 14, 2006 Posted: 0939 GMT (1739 HKT)
MOGADISHU, Somalia (CNN) — Fighting between transitional government forces and Islamic fighters subsided for a time on Sunday in Somalia, apparently as both sides regrouped to attack again, local journalists reported.
Witnesses said at least 14 people were killed in the latest fighting on Saturday, adding to a death toll that had already topped 130 in recent days.
The bodies of four dead fighters — including a suspected foreigner — were laying in a street in Mogadishu. People are apparently too afraid to try to retrieve the corpses for fear of being shot by snipers.
Most of those killed have been civilian bystanders. Many were children, officials said. Hundreds of others have been wounded.
Local journalists report that Abdi Qeypdid, a warlord fighting for the coalition forces and a former police chief in the country’s capital, has recently been setting up roadblocks and checking all cars coming into and out of Mogadishu as hundreds of people try to flee the violence.
The move is an apparent attempt to beef up his forces and slow the supply lines of the Islamist forces.
The heavy battles have been in the Sii-Sii neighborhood, a residential area of northern Mogadishu, with artillery and mortar fire involved.
The transitional government forces are made of aligned secular warlords, while the Muslim fighters are a coalition of radical Islamic leaders, known as the Islamic Court Union.
President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed declared that any government ministers participating in the fighting would be removed from the government.
International concerns about the east African nation have been growing amid reports the al Qaeda terrorist network may have increased its presence in the chaotic state in recent years.
The battles under way pit the so-called Mogadishu Anti-Terrorism Coalition against a union of Islamic fighters who support Islamic Sharia law in the capital. The anti-terrorism coalition argues the Islamists are allied with al Qaeda; the Islamists accuse the United States of funneling cash to the warlords.
U.S. officials say the United States has supported Somalia’s anti-terrorism efforts. U.S. officials have also decried the violence taking place in Mogadishu.
Journalist Mohamed Amin contributed to this report.
Source: CNN, May 14, 2006
