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Reuters - Monday, March 31 MOGADISHU - Hospitals in Mogadishu overflowed with the wounded on Sunday
and the death toll from mortar strikes on the city's sprawling main
market reached at least 17.
Scores of civilians at the Bakara Market were hurt on Saturday when
troops positioned at the Villa Somalia presidential palace returned fire
against Islamist insurgents who attacked it with mortar bombs, witnesses
said. Abdi Hussein, a 25-year-old hawker, was selling a pair of sunglasses to
one shopper when the shells detonated around him. "The shrapnel tore into my legs. Three people near me died instantly,"
he told Reuters at the capital's Madina Hospital, where a nurse was
treating him under a tree. "The customer who was buying from me lost a leg," he said. President Abdullahi Yusuf was meeting Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum
Mesfin at Villa Somalia at the time of the attack, but no one in the
white-washed hilltop complex was hurt. Residents said Ethiopian soldiers guarding Yusuf then began launching
shells into Bakara in the city below. Seven people were killed in the
part of the market used by money changers, witnesses said, while four
others died in its food section. One patient who did get a bed at Madina Hospital was Ahmed Nur Botan,
who had been sitting close to the money changers and suffered wounds to
his torso. "I saw two people standing just a few metres from me and the shrapnel
cut them to pieces," he said. ANGER IN BAKARA Ali Moalim Adde, Madina's deputy director, said two more victims died
while being rushed to hospital, and four more had died on the operating
table. About 50 wounded were admitted. That brought the toll to at least 17, but a leader of the business
community in Bakara Market said more people had died. The market was teeming with Saturday shoppers when the attack occurred. Ali Mohamed Siad told Reuters by telephone that 28 people had been
killed, including traders, customers and porters. "We believe the Ethiopian troops targeted Bakara deliberately," Siad
said, adding that the market traders had hired their own guards to stop
Islamist rebels using the area to strike at government forces and their
Ethiopian allies. "We have our own forces dressed in special uniforms with the consent of
the president and prime minister ... insurgents are not allowed to carry
out attacks from our zones," he said. "We tried to contact the president
but his aides obstructed us." Somalia's interim government has long said Bakara, which is infamous for
its open-air arms bazaar, is a stronghold of guerrillas blamed for an
Iraq-style insurgency of mortar blasts, assassinations and roadside
bombings. The fighting, which killed 6,500 people last year in Mogadishu alone,
has sharply worsened what aid workers warn is a fast deteriorating
humanitarian disaster. More than 1 million Somalis are now internal refugees, and some 20,000
flee the capital every month. Most of them end up in areas suffering
from the worst drought in years.
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