Monday, July 19, 2010
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Mogadishu - Seven people were killed and 26 injured after a stray shell hit a school in the Somali capital Mogadishu during fighting between insurgents and government forces, officials said Monday.
"We have admitted 26 wounded people to hospital, including a dozen school children," Ali Muse Sheikh, head of Mogadishu's ambulance service, told the German Press Agency dpa. "We also collected seven dead bodies."
Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab, which eight days ago carried out a twin suicide bombing in the Ugandan capital Kampala that killed 76, is battling to oust the weak Western-backed government.
A spokesman for al-Shabaab on Sunday said that the group attacked government positions on Sunday, and captured several positions.
The government denied the insurgents had made any gains.
More than 20,000 people have died in the insurgency, which kicked off in early 2007 after Ethiopia invaded to oust the Islamist regime in control at the time.
Al-Shabaab, which has links to al-Qaeda, controls much of south and central Somalia, while the government is penned into a few districts in Mogadishu.
The group's attack in Kampala, which targeted football fans watching the World Cup final, was its first on foreign soil.
It said the bombings were in retaliation for indiscriminate shelling of civilians by Ugandan and Burundian troops, part of an African Union peacekeeping mission shoring up the Somali government.