Somali insurgency escalates, 15 civilians die
(adds Baidoa bomb)
By Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Mohamed
MOGADISHU, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Islamists attacked African peacekeepers in Mogadishu, sparking a battle that killed 11 civilians and sent many fleeing the city in Somalia's escalating insurgency, witnesses said on Wednesday.
"We have no hope now and I think this is the end of Mogadishu," mother-of-seven Fatuma Kassim said, joining a stream of residents escaping the coastal capital after shells and gunfire rocked the city on Tuesday night.
In Baidoa, capital of Somalia's parliament, four people died on Wednesday when a bomb exploded in a donkey-cart, police said.
In a bloody month even by Somalia's extreme standards, insurgents have increasingly turned their fire on African Union (AU) troops. Analysts view that as a tactic to prevent more foreign intervention in a nation in civil conflict since 1991.
On Tuesday night, insurgents shelled an AU base from various sides, prompting heavy return fire and tank incursions into a market area viewed as a rebel stronghold.
The AU, whose 2,200 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers have done little to quell the war, said it suffered no casualties.
The pan-African body wants to hand over to the United Nations, but that organisation is wary of entering a quagmire some are calling "Africa's Iraq", especially given its disastrous attempt to impose peace there in the early 1990s.
"The insurgents have decided to hit the AU hard to intimidate Africa from sending any more soldiers and to make the likelihood of U.N. intervention even more remote," said a Western diplomat who tracks Somalia.
COUNTING THE DEAD
Once again, it was Mogadishu residents counting their dead on Wednesday. Since the insurgency began at the start of 2007, nearly 10,000 civilians have died.
"A big shell killed five people after it landed on them as they ran to take cover," witness Osman Farah said.
"We have just collected their corpses."
Another resident, Aden Ismail, said a missile landed on a group of refugees in a ruined former college, killing two.
"Then another mortar dropped and injured seven others. We could not take them to hospital because there was gunfire everywhere," he said.
Islamist spokesman Abdirahim Isse Adow said Tuesday's attack was retribution for the shelling of a market earlier in the week, which he blamed on the peacekeepers. Thirty civilians died in Bakara market on Monday, with all sides blaming each other.
"It is clear that the Islamists are about to take control of the country. The government and Ethiopian troops control only a small portion of the city let alone the country," he said.
Drought and high food prices have compounded the effect of the conflict on a traumatised population, one million of whom live as internal refugees. With attacks on aid workers common, relief agencies face a dangerous task to help Somalis.
A U.S. expert on Somalia, John Prendergast, said the insurgents now view outside players -- from the African Union to relief groups -- as helping the government.
"They look at most of these external actors as probably sympathetic to the TFG (Transitional Federal Government) or at least facilitating the TFG's goals, so shutting out as many of these people as possible, whether NGO or U.N. actors, will only help the Islamists," he said. (Additional reporting by Mohamed Ahmed in Baidoa, Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Wangui Kanina)
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