Mogadishu, January 29: Two hundred Somali VIPs on Friday feted the first year of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s shaky rule as fighting that killed at least nine overnight rocked a theatre where they were gathered.
As poetry was being read inside a newly-renovated theatre on Mogadishu’s presidential compound, the Shebab insurgent group pounded the area with mortar rounds and machinegunfire.
Sharif was unshaken despite the sound of explosions, outgoing or incoming mortar rounds and artillery shells drowning the show.
A few metres away from the freshly whitewashed walls of the theatre a seriously wounded man was being evacuated in a carpet.
Artillery exchanges and automatic weapons fire broke out around 2:00 am (2300 GMT Thursday) between the African Union’s peacekeeping mission (Amisom) and insurgents and ran through the night.
After dying down a little the violence resumed in full intensity at dawn, one reporter on the scene said.
“Around seven civilians died in the clashes, including women and children. Most of them were killed by mortar shells and stray bullets,” Abdi Adan, an eyewitness, said.
The fighting was concentrated around the strategic K4 junction halfway between the Somali capital’s airport and the port, on the edge of an area controlled by the African Union peacekeeping mission (Amisom).
The Shebab in a statement said two of its fighters died in the overnight clashes.
“Four civilians died in Wardhigley district and three others were killed in Holwadag and Bakara area. It was the worst fighting we have seen recently,” Mohamoud Ahmed, another local resident, said.
“Kilometre Four” (K4) in southeastern Mogadishu is where the airport road meets several other key thoroughfares and is a major flashpoint in the war-ravaged coastal city.
Civilians living in the densely-populated neighbourhoods clamped between Amisom-protected areas and the strongholds of the Shebab insurgents are often caught in the crossfire.
“We have collected around 22 injured from several locations in Mogadishu and several people others have died,” Ali Musa, head of Mogadishu’s ambulance services, said.
“I don’t have the full figures but I know that three of the dead are a mother and her two children,” he said.
The Shebab issued a statement claiming responsibility for the shelling.
On January 30 last year, Somali MPs gathered in Djibouti to elect a new president and Sharif was declared the winner the next day and hailed by many in his country and abroad as Somalia’s best chance of peace in years.
Sharif, a cleric, came to power a year ago pledging to bring rebels back into the fold but the Shebab and his former allies from the Hezb al-Islamm group instead turned against him.
The Shebab has been taking extreme stances since it broke away from the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), who ruled much of Somalia with relative peace and prosperity until the Ethiopian invasion late 2006.
After the Ethiopian troops ousted the ICU, Somalia plunged into unprecedented chaos, where warlords and pirates have returned to the scene.
The US-backed Ethiopian troops in Somalia had resorted to throat-slitting executions and gruesome methods that include rape and torture.
As a result, the Shebab has become increasingly radicalised and has spearheaded an insurgency against the Somali government, whose president today is a former ICU leader.
Despite the Ethiopian withdrawal, it remains unlikely that Somalis would soon be returning to the period of calm and security enjoyed under ICU rule.
The US and its allies in the region, who were not happy with the then relatively popular and stable ICU, will likely to face a non-negotiating force when dealing with the Shebab.
—Agencies