Mogadishu (Somalia) At least 5 people were killed, including two policemen and several others were injured on Saturday after hand grenades were thrown at transitional federal government troops patrolling in the main Bakara in south Mogadishu and in some other districts of the capital, eyewitness accounts told APA.
A series of grenade attacks began in the afternoon near the Howlwadag junction in south Mogadishu and the Bakara market which were aimed at patrolling soldiers of the transitional government as well as at a passing government car.
“I saw two policemen lying dead on the ground and with another one wounded after the blast. Everybody started to run away because there was firing and bullets were flying over my head,” Hamud Bulle, a pedestrian who witnessed the violence told APA.
Abdi Nor, a resident told APA how another grenade was hurled in Darkenly district in south Mogadishu, which was said to have been aimed at policemen who were in the area, but instead he said several civilians were wounded, including a little girl, who later died of her wounds.
There are now an estimated 200,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in this normally sleepy town of Afgoye, outside of Mogadishu, and many are living in appalling conditions. They are among some 600,000 people who have left Mogadishu recently, according to the United Nations’ High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Those fleeing Mogadishu would escalate whenever there is violence, which in turn increases the displaced people who are now living in appalling conditions in the capital’s outskirts.
The forces of the transitional government and their Ethiopian allies have been unable to quell the violence existing in Mogadishu, and they have become embroiled in the conflict, which has fuelled the violence in this war-torn capital.
Somalia had plunged into anarchy after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in199, and since that time, there has not been any effective central government.
Published by Korir, API/APN africanpress@chello.no source.apa
