Somali government forces drove Islamist insurgents from two districts of the capital on Tuesday in another day of heavy fighting that killed dozens of people, residents and officials said. Hard-line rebels with links to al Qaeda stepped up attacks in Mogadishu in early May and government forces have been battling to recapture lost ground.
Fighting has killed more than 200 people since then and nearly 70,000 residents have fled. "We have swept them from the area. Madina and Dharkenley districts are now in our hands," Abdiqadir Odweyne, a senior police officer, told Reuters. Abdifatah Shaweye, deputy governor of Mogadishu, told Reuters government forces had also ousted the insurgents from a police station in Yaqshid district in the north of the capital.
The battle for Mogadishu is the stiffest test yet for new President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a former Islamist rebel who joined a UN-brokered peace process last year and was elected by parliament in January.
Advances by the insurgent group al Shabaab and allies have been worrying Western powers and neighbours as they fear the Islamist rebels may use Somalia as a base to destabilise the region's two biggest economies, Kenya and Ethiopia. Residents reported seeing dozens of bodies in the streets of the capital - Islamist insurgents, civilians and policemen. No confirmed death toll was immediately available. The United Nations' refugee agency said 10,000 residents had fled Mogadishu since last week, taking the total number of displaced since the upsurge in violence in May to 67,000.