MOGADISHU, June 5 (Reuters) - Rival Islamist groups battled for a central Somali town on Friday, killing at least 56 fighters, while the number of new refugees from a month of fighting in the capital Mogadishu neared 100,000. Somalia's two-and-a-half year insurgency -- the latest cycle of violence in 19 years of conflict in the Horn of Africa nation -- has killed 18,000 civilians and thousands more fighters. It has also drawn foreign jihadists into Somalia, enabled piracy to flourish offshore, and unsettled the whole region, with East African neighbours on high security alert. Rebels from the militant al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam groups first wrested control of Wabho town from pro-government moderate Islamists Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca in a day of heavy mortar and machine-gun exchanges, witnesses said. "We have pounded mortars on the infidels and entered the town from all sides. Wabho is now under our control," Hisbul Islam spokesman Sheikh Muse Arale told Reuters. Fighters spoke of dozens of dead, and the local Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said it had confirmed 56 fighters killed and dozens more injured. Central towns have been changing hands regularly between militants and moderates in on-off fighting throughout the year...MORE..http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L536708.htm
Friday, June 5, 2009
Somali Islamists battle for town, 56 dead
MOGADISHU, June 5 (Reuters) - Rival Islamist groups battled for a central Somali town on Friday, killing at least 56 fighters, while the number of new refugees from a month of fighting in the capital Mogadishu neared 100,000. Somalia's two-and-a-half year insurgency -- the latest cycle of violence in 19 years of conflict in the Horn of Africa nation -- has killed 18,000 civilians and thousands more fighters. It has also drawn foreign jihadists into Somalia, enabled piracy to flourish offshore, and unsettled the whole region, with East African neighbours on high security alert. Rebels from the militant al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam groups first wrested control of Wabho town from pro-government moderate Islamists Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca in a day of heavy mortar and machine-gun exchanges, witnesses said. "We have pounded mortars on the infidels and entered the town from all sides. Wabho is now under our control," Hisbul Islam spokesman Sheikh Muse Arale told Reuters. Fighters spoke of dozens of dead, and the local Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said it had confirmed 56 fighters killed and dozens more injured. Central towns have been changing hands regularly between militants and moderates in on-off fighting throughout the year...MORE..http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L536708.htm
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