Wednesday, April 18, 2007
As rival forces faced off in the volatile al Kamin neighbourhood, the elders met to discuss the fighting that raged overnight.
The clashes broke out despite a truce announced by elders of Mogadishu’s dominant Hawiye clan after talks with Ethiopian military commanders early this month.
"We are in urgent talks," a Hawiye elder told AFP on condition he was not named.
Last week, Ethiopian forces refused to meet with the elders for further talks unless commanders of the insurgent movement attended, which raised the tension in the lawless capital.
Ethiopian forces have been deployed in the country since the start of the year to boost a United Nations-backed transitional government, which it helped oust Islamists from much of south and central Somalia.
Officials said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, whose palace Villa Somalia, was pounded by mortar shells, had left the city. But they would not say where he had gone.
"I am not sure if his leaving is related to the fighting, but overnight, some mortar shells landed inside and outside the palace where he was staying," said one palace official.
Seven people were killed, several civilians wounded and houses demolished in the latest fighting, witnesses said.
The shattered truce had itself followed the four days of intense fighting that erupted March 29.
On that occasion Ethiopian troops launched a crackdown on insurgents accused of attacking government and Ethiopian army positions in the capital.
On that occasion, elders said that at least 1,000 people had been killed and more than 4,000 wounded in what humanitarian groups described as the worst fighting in 15 years.
Top Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who is currently in Eritrea, has called on Somalis to intensify their resistance to Ethiopian forces, whom he accused of "destruction and genocide against defenseless civilians."
Somalia, a nation of about 10 million, has lacked an effective government since the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 touched off a power struggle that exploded into inter-clan warfare.
Source: AFP, April 18, 2007