The shelling began after government soldiers in the city were pushed back from positions they had taken by reinforcements sent in by the Islamist militia, witnesses said.

“The government soldiers were reinforcing newly taken positions when they came under attack from Islamist fighters,” Mowliid Abdifatah Igal, a local elder in the Hodan district, said by phone today. “Later, heavily armed Islamists streamed through the district and both sides started shelling each other.”

Somalia’s Western-backed government has been battling Islamist insurgents since 2007 after the Islamic Courts Union was ousted from power when troops from neighboring Ethiopia invaded. The Horn of Africa nation hasn’t had a functioning central administration since the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre, the former dictator, in 1991.

Members of the al-Shabaab Islamist militia stopped the advance of government forces, Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Hussein, al- Shabaab’s spokesman, told reporters in the city today.

“We admitted 34 wounded people and four others died of their wounds while being treated, including a two-year-old boy,” Dr. Mohamed Yususf, director of Medina Hospital, said by phone. Five other corpses were found in the streets, Ali Muse Sheikh, a paramedic who works for Lifeline Africa and the Nationlink ambulance service, said.

Source: bloomberg

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