Somali insurgents briefly seize police base

By Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Mohamed

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Fighting in Mogadishu killed six more people on Friday, including four orphans, a day after Islamist rebels firing grenades briefly seized a major police base in the heart of Somalia's capital.

At least 25 people have died in two days of fierce battles between the insurgents and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops that raised even more doubt over prospects for rare peace talks.

Residents said the insurgents attacked government forces in the city's Harayale district as dusk fell, triggering exchanges of heavy machine-gun fire and artillery barrages.

"A mortar round landed on my neighbor's house, killing four orphans whose father died in shelling last year," witness Osman Hussein told Reuters by telephone from the area.

Another local, Farah Ali, was leaving Mogadishu's sprawling Bakara Market when he was caught in the crossfire.

"We crept along on our chests, but bullets hit two of my friends. We dragged them off when the fighting died down."

Two men's bodies lay close to a nearby police checkpoint, residents said. More than a dozen people were injured.

Friday's clashes broke out after the rebels seized control of a police compound late on Thursday in heavily guarded streets near the city's air and sea ports. They looted weapons and burnt vehicles before retreating as reinforcements arrived.

TENTATIVE TALKS

Washington has formally listed the al Shabaab militia as a terrorist organization and says it has close ties to al Qaeda.

There were also clashes on Friday between security forces and Islamist rebels in the country's northern Puntland region that killed at least three civilians, witnesses said.

The violence cast a pall over tentative, U.N.-brokered peace talks between the interim government and opposition exiles that were due to begin on Saturday in Djibouti.

The militants behind near-daily ambushes and roadside bombs are the remnants of an Islamist movement that was ousted by the government and its Ethiopian allies at the start of last year.

The leaders of that group, and other critics of President Abdullahi Yusuf, have since moved to Ethiopia's arch-foe Eritrea and formed the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia.

They had repeatedly refused to meet government officials until Ethiopian troops left Somali soil. But last month they dropped that demand and agreed to send delegates to Djibouti.