(SA) Mogadishu – Nine more bodies have been found in Somalia’s war-riven capital after a weekend of clashes. Eight decomposing corpses lay near Al-Hidaya Mosque in northern Mogadishu and another was spotted near a stadium in the south of the capital, bringing the toll from the two days of fighting to 56.
Local resident Asad Mohamoud Moalim said that “no one dares go closer, let alone (conduct) burials”.
“We prayed to Allah to get us out of this hell. We were trapped in the battle area, but this morning we got a chance to flee,” said Fortun Mohamoud Iro, a mother of three, adding that she saw several bodies near the mosque.
No clashes were reported on Monday in the capital. Mogadishu’s heaviest fighting in two months erupted on Saturday between Ethiopian Woyanne forces and Somali insurgents.
Death-toll in Somalia battles rises to 85
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The death-toll from battles between Somali insurgents and allied Ethiopian-Somali Woyanne troops rose to 85 on Monday, leaving corpses on the streets and deepening the Horn of Africa nation’s humanitarian crisis.
After mortars and machine-gun fire rocked Mogadishu over the weekend in the worst fighting for months, the insurgents seized the southern coastal town of Guda, killing four Somali [puppet] soldiers and wounding at least seven more, locals said.
“The town is under their control at the moment,” politician Omar Abdullahi Farole told Reuters from the area.
That attack at dawn on Monday added to at least 81 people dead in Mogadishu over the weekend.
The rebels have in the last few months launched an increasing number of hit-and-run raids on small towns — seizing control from local government-allied militias, only to melt away before reinforcements arrive.
Insurgents took another town, Dinsor, in south-central Somalia, on Monday. And they imposed sharia law on another locality, Wajid, taken in the same area at the weekend.
“They warned the public against erecting illegal checkpoints, smoking cigarettes, chewing (the narcotic leaf) khat and watching movies,” Wajid resident Aden Abdirahman said.
TRAPPED IN MOSQUE
Once again in the city’s violent history, bodies lay on the streets uncollected.
“This morning as I was trying to escape the fighting which I feared might restart, I saw four dead men I knew lying in the neighbourhood,” resident Hussein Abdulle said by telephone.
Another resident, Abdulahi Mohamud, said at least 20 people — mostly women and children — were trapped in a mosque where Ethiopian tank crews had dug deep defensive trenches.
“Two Somalis who have been beheaded are also lying there,” Mohamud said from the northern district of Huruwa.
Meanwhile, police on Monday arrested an editor with the Shabelle radio station accusing him of airing false information regarding the fighting.
“He reported that insurgents attacked and seized Gulwade compound where police are staying. It was a lie since no fighting took place there. We will put him on trial for airing false reports to the public,” police commander Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdullahi told Reuters.
Colleagues gave the editor’s name as Abdi Mohamed Ismail and said he was arrested on his way to the office early on Monday.
The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, a local group which tracks the violence, says at least 81 people were killed and 119 wounded in the clashes on Saturday and Sunday.
Its researchers estimate that some 6,500 residents were killed last year by fighting in the capital alone, while 1.5 million were uprooted from their homes.
Aid workers say 250,000 civilians sheltering in squalid conditions just outside Mogadishu represent the biggest group of internally displaced people in the world.