Mogadishu, March 12: Hundreds fled Mogadishu as warring sides clashed for a third day today, wounding at least 19 and flattening homes in the violence-wracked Somali capital, witnesses and medical sources said.
African Union-backed government forces and Islamist insurgents exchanged artillery fire in a southern neighbourhood, sparking the exodus.
“Hundreds of families are fleeing the city today as clashes between Somali government and insurgents go into a third day,” said Mohamed Moalim Kulow, a local resident.
“I have seen houses in several blocks in my neighbourhood completely destroyed by the heavy shelling and no one is left in that neighbourhood,” Kulow said as he boarded a mini bus with his five children.
A medical official in the city’s Daynile hospital said, “We have received 19 civilians who were injured in the shelling this morning. Three of them were seriously injured and one them was a child.”
More than 40 civilians have been killed in two days of fighting between the government forces and the Al Qaeda-linked Shebab in rebels who control much of the capital.
The rebels attacked their rivals in northern Mogadishu on Wednesday, sparking heavy exchanges that left some 23 civilians dead.
In a strident retaliation yesterday, AU tanks and armoured vehicles raided the insurgents’ position in the same area and more than 20 civilians were killed.
The government, which announced a broad offensive to dislodge the Islamists from Mogadishu, said an onslaught was imminent.
“We call on residents to stay away from the fighting zones because the big offensive to sweep rebels from the whole city is imminent,” Mogadishu Mayor Abdirizak Mohamed Nur told reporters.
The Shebab claimed inflicting heavy damage on their rivals, who briefly occupied one of their strongholds in the north of the seaside city.
“We damaged some of the enemy’s armoured vehicles in the clashes… They retreated to their positions with heavy losses yesterday,” Shebab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage told journalists.
“Their response is only shelling civilian-populated areas far away from the fighting zones,” he added.
—Agencies