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Mogadishu - Fighting between insurgents and
government troops rocked the Somali capital Mogadishu Wednesday,
leaving at least 12 people killed, officials said, in ongoing clashes
that have killed thousands since January 2007.
The battle, which broke out in northern Mogadishu, was the worst in a
month as each side fired machine guns, lobbed grenades and flung
mortars at the other.
The escalated fighting came as United
Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said peacekeepers might be sent
to Somalia should certain conditions, like an agreed ceasefire, be met.
'I woke up hearing residents yelling as they were escaping Ethiopian soldiers in the streets,' said Leylo Mo'alim, 29.
Doctors and nurses said at least 20 people were admitted to hospitals around the bullet-scarred capital.
'Insurgents tried to retrieve the bodies on the road but the crossfire
rained down from both sides so they were unable,' said Mahad Sadeek,
who witnessed the clash.
The Ethiopian-backed transitional
government rolled into the capital in January 2007, unleashing a
brutal, Iraq-style insurgency that has displaced more than 600,000
people in what the UN calls the world's worst and most neglected
humanitarian crisis.
Somalia has had no effective central
rule since the 1991 toppling of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, which
plunged the Horn of Africa country into lawlessness and insecurity.
SOURCE: Monster and Critics, March 19, 2008