Mortar attacks continue in Somalia

Mortar attacks on the Somali capital Mogadishu have prompted hundreds more people to flee from the city.

The latest barrage came as another threat – disease – took its toll in the south.

Doctors reported that as many as 22 people had died in the past 24 hours in southern Somalia from a suspected cholera outbreak.

Late yesterday Somali insurgents fired more than a dozen mortars into different parts of Mogadishu, and Ethiopian troops backing the government responded with artillery rounds. Five civilians died, including a child, and 14 others were wounded, an African Union spokesman and witnesses said.

Hundreds of residents of the affected southern and northern neighbourhoods of Mogadishu today left their homes to find safety.

Doctors in Mogadishu and the southern Somalia towns of Afgoye and Bardhere reported that 22 people died of cholera in their jurisdictions or neighbouring villages in the past 24 hours.

A mortar attack on Mogadishu’s main port, where a few hours earlier the African Union began off-loading military equipment for its peacekeeping force, was part of a general campaign by insurgents to frustrate the work of the troops, said Capt. Paddy Ankunda, the African Union peacekeeping force’s spokesman.

A group calling itself the Brigades of Tawhid and Jihad in the Land of Somalia claimed responsibility for the attacks.

It said in a statement posted on the website of Somalia’s routed Islamic movement that it attacked several parts of the capital where “infidels live”.

Mogadishu has become the main focus of an insurgency aimed at blocking the transitional government from establishing its authority there and stopping peacekeepers from helping the government stabilise the capital.