A mortar shell smashed into Mogadishu's main Bakara market on Monday, killing at least four people, witnesses said. "We were eating when a mortar shell landed and killed three people on the spot," eyewitness Ali Hassan Aden said, adding that five other civilians were hospitalised.
Medical sources at the city's main Medina hospital told AFP that one of the injured died of his wounds shortly after being admitted. Witnesses said it was not immediately clear who fired the shell. Last week at least 12 people were killed in a similar attack on the market that Ethiopian forces blamed on Islamist rebels who are leading a bloody insurgency in the capital.
Bakara market, once the heart of the battered capital, is one of several districts that have become almost deserted and sees daily fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces and the Islamist-led insurgents. The fighting has forced at least 600,000 people to leave Mogadishu in recent weeks, prompting UN warnings of a humanitarian disaster in the country. Aid groups have said the insecurity is choking their efforts to deliver supplies. Numerous bids to restore stability to the Horn of Africa nation since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre have failed because of clan warfare and unrest.
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