Mogadishu, April 26: Heavy shelling and bombardment in Somalia’s restive capital city of Mogadishu has killed at least ten people, mostly civilians, witnesses and medics say.
The shelling erupted after militants launched mortar attacks on the Somali Presidential Palace on Sunday, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The government forces backed by the African Union troops responded with heavy artillery shells, targeting Mogadishu’s Bakara Market, an opposition stronghold and other northern districts.
“We collected 20 wounded people from the Bakara market, Wardhigley and Hawlwadag neighborhoods, some of them in serious condition,” said Ali Muse, who heads the Mogadishu Ambulance Services.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991 and almost half of its population (3.8 million people) is in dire need of humanitarian food aid.
War-torn Mogadishu has been the scene of deadly civil strife since the collapse of the country’s central government.
——-Agencies