Somali Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian troops exchanged mortar fire on Sunday in some of the heaviest clashes in months with at least 20 people killed in the last 24 hours, residents and witnesses said.
The fighting was fiercest in the Islamist stronghold of northern Mogadishu. Residents said the two sides, which had reinforced positions overnight, exchanged heavy fire in the early hours of Sunday around the Save Our Souls (SOS) Hospital.
"A mortar shell landed on a house just behind SOS hospital, killing an old man and seriously wounding his wife along with her 3 children," said a medical worker who declined to be named. "As we were running to help this family we saw an unidentified dead man lying on the ground," he added.
Health workers in various hospitals said they were treating scores of patients wounded in fighting. Residents said at least 15 people were killed on Saturday, including 7 militants and two Ethiopian soldiers.
One witness said he saw the bodies of four men near the main livestock market, adding that no one had dared to take the bodies away "because the whole place is under Ethiopian siege". Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein expressed regret for Somalis forced to flee the violence, but said his interim government and its Ethiopian allies had the right to self-defence.
"I am very sorry for the poor civilians who evacuate when fighting takes place," he told a news conference. "The government of Somalia is always ready for peace, but if our troops and Ethiopian troops are attacked, fighting with any group that is against peace will be inevitable."
Hussein's interim administration is struggling to contain a deepening Islamist-led Iraqi-style insurgency with near-daily attacks on allied Somali-Ethiopian troops. The Islamists have also carried out more and more hit-and-run attacks on towns - seizing control from local administrations that often amount to little more than militias - only to give them up and melt away.
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