Mogadishu, Dec 13 (DPA) Heavy fighting convulsed the Somali capital Mogadishu Thursday, killing at least 12 people in a ceaseless spiral of violence that has seen hundreds of thousands flee.
Gun battles raged overnight Wednesday with mortar shelling punctuating the morning hours in the main Bakara market Thursday, which witnesses said was the fiercest fighting since October.
At least 14 people were wounded, but the number was likely to be higher.
“The shell landed in a crowd of people where a business transaction was going on,” said Abdirahman Bile. “Inside the store blood and pieces of flesh were scattered on the ground,” added witness Ali Mohamed Gutale.
Hospital sources said they were overwhelmed by the number of injured flooding in.
Bullet-scarred Mogadishu has been engulfed in vicious fighting between government troops and insurgents that has emptied the city or else forced residents to live in hiding.
At least 1,000 people have been killed but a local human rights group puts the number as high as 6,000.
The UN has warned that sexual violence against women is increasing in the ongoing clashes that began when Ethiopian-backed government forces swooped into the capital at the New Year, ousting a popular Islamist group.
Some 600,000 people have poured out of Mogadishu since then, with many setting up makeshift homes on a 30-km stretch of road outside the capital.
Civil war broke out in Somalia after the 1991 toppling of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, which plunged the Horn of Africa country into anarchy.