Feature: Mogadishu, a city haunted by fear

MOGADISHU, Feb. 20, 2010 (Xinhua News Agency) -- Ali and his brother, residents of the Somali capital Mogadishu, got up early on Saturday and walked a long way to the main camp of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to get their gunshot wounds treated by the peacekeepers' medical services.Saturday is usually the busiest day for AMISOM's clinic, with many Somali civilians, mostly wounded during fightings between the government forces and insurgents, waiting in long queues for hours just to see the doctor.Ali told Xinhua that he and his brother were the only two people left in their family, as the other members were all killed in the fightings between government forces and the rebels.Last year, Ali was shot in the back during the violence while this year, a bullet went through his brother's leg."We have no job, no food. They provide free treatment here, so we came," said Ali.The brothers were among some 400 civilians who came to the clinic in its "opening day" on every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.Before getting to see the doctor, they must first go through extremely strict security checks, under the gunpoint of a soldier lurking from the roof of the clinic."Everything should be controlled," AMISOM soldiers told Xinhua correspondents who arrived in the war-ravaged city Thursday in an embedded interview with the AU peacekeeping forces there.AMISOM's wariness was an echo of the deteriorating security situation in Somalia, where the transitional government and Islamic insurgents have been engaged in bloody fightings almost on a daily basis. The AMISOM barracks are among the main targets of attacks.On Sept. 17 last year, a suicide bomb attack by Islamist rebels on the headquarters of AU forces in Mogadishu left 17 peacekeepers dead while 29 others were wounded.AMISOM deputy commander Maj. Gen. Juvenal Niyonguruza, from Burundi, was among those killed while former AMISOM commander Gen. Nathan Mugisha, from Uganda, was wounded in the blast.At the gate of the clinic, patients were eagerly waiting to see the doctor."Don't shoot me, I will be killed." Xinhua correspondents were immediately refused by one of the patients when trying to record the scene with a camera."If they are found to have come to AMISOM, the Al Shabaab will kill them," AMISOM's public information officer Maj. Barigye Ba- Hoku told Xinhua.Inside the clinic, a three-year-old boy was getting his bleeding arm binded up. He suddenly burst into funk and began to cry when the correspondents approached and waved to him."He is afraid of your camera, he thought it's a gun," a nurse told Xinhua.The little boy witnessed the death of his parents last month, when they were shot dead by armed rebels. The militants then beated the boy with a gun and broke his arm. Since then he has been easily frightened with anything that looks like a gun, the nurse explained.Fear is not only haunting the three-year-old orphan, but also many civilians of the war-ravaged Somali capital.In Somalia, which has been plagued by civil strife since 1991, civilians have become victims of the endless fightings and the escalating violence.Over the past two decades, some 1.3 million people have been displaced by the conflicts, as the Horn of Africa nation was thrown into shambles.In the first month of 2010, clashes between government troops and Islamic rebels in central Somalia have caused a casualty of more than 500 civilians and 80,000 displaced, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
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