 NAIROBI, (MWCNews)--Five people including two children were killed on Sunday in Somalia's bullet-riddled Mogadishu in latest surge of violence in the Horn of Africa nation, lawmakers confirmed on Monday.
According to lawmaker Awad Ashara, two schoolchildren were killed and at least five people were injured after a series of attacks by insurgents in south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
"Two pupils were killed along with an elderly man after a roadside bomb exploded as students walked to school in the city's northern Gupta district," Ashara told MWC news by telephone from Mogadishu, one of the dangerous cities in the world.
He said two men who were wounded during the blast died later at a hospital in Mogadishu.
Ashara said several people were also injured in two separate grenade attacks against government forces and police on Sunday as a series of bomb explosions continue rocking the restive city.
The international community's-backed reconciliation conference seen as the last best chance to bring some peace to anarchic Somalia has failed to quell continuing violence in the city.
The Congress, which is the first of its kind to be held in Somalia, has been hailed as a Somali-driven process that offers the people of Somalia an opportunity to participate, own and support the final outcome of the reconciliation process.
The insurgents "plant bombs among the civilians and leave it behind. It is a barbaric decision," police spokesman Colonel Abdi Wahid said.
Grenade attacks were mounted firstly against security forces searching for weapons in Mogadishu's southern district of Suqaholaha and then secondly against a police patrol in the Holwadag district.
The Horn of Africa nation is wracked by an Iraq-style insurgency led by Islamist rebels against the Somali government and its Ethiopian military backers.
The UN-backed conference has been boycotted by the Horn of African nation's key opposition groups who have vowed to fight an insurgency against the government and the Ethiopian troops backing the interim government.
The latest violence followed on the death of a 20-year-old radio reporter who was shot dead Friday.
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) general secretary Aidan White said the latest victim became the seventh journalist to be killed in Somalia so far this year.
"This latest killing confirms our fears that journalism has become more dangerous than ever in Somalia," White said.
"The deteriorating political crisis and increasing levels of violence make independent reporting almost impossible. International organizations need to think hard about action now to calm the situation," he said.
Somalia's transitional government, backed by Ethiopian warplanes, tanks and troops, drove an Islamist movement out of Mogadishu in late December, ending its six-month rule of the capital and much of the south under strict sharia law. |
