Mogadishu: At least seven people were killed and several others injured when militants armed with mortars and machine guns attacked African Union forces in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu overnight, media reported on Tuesday.
According to reports the al Shabaab militants, who are allied to al Qaeda, were forced out of most of the city last year but have kept up sporadic bomb and suicide attacks.
A spokesman from the Burundi contingent of the AU’s AMISOM peacekeeping mission in Somalia Captain Ndayiragije Come said that it was heavy fighting last night where two al Shabaab dead bodies were lying here.
“From our side two were injured. They were also shelling our position – they missed their target,” he added.
Witnesses said shelling from the fighting hit two houses, killing at least seven civilians, four of them from one family.
“A big shell landed on a house made of iron sheets. The father, mother and their two sons died, only two children survived with injuries,” witnesses told media.
“Another shell landed on a nearby house. A mother and her son died. The fragments of the shell killed a boy in another house, we are now burying 7 people,” he added.
The rebel group has waged a bloody five-year campaign to topple Somalia’s Western-backed government and impose its harsh interpretation of Islamic law (sharia).
The rebels continue to hold swathes of central and southern Somalia but are being squeezed out of some areas by Kenyan and Ethiopian troops, which have launched incursions inside Somalia in support of the beleaguered government.
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