Artillery battles between allied Somali-Ethiopian troops and Islamist insurgents killed at least 12 people today around Mogadishu's sprawling Bakara Market, residents said.
One witness said at least 20 mortar bombs exploded in the heart of Somalia's coastal capital. "Ethiopian and government soldiers wanted to raid Bakara this morning but the insurgents confronted them, firing rockets," shopkeeper Ali Osman told Reuters by telephone.
"The troops responded by pounding the market with mortar bombs ... one blast killed nine people, including two children and four women, in the market." Another local man, Farah Osman, said three more civilians were killed when a shell detonated near a Bakara bank.
Government officials say the market, notorious for its open-air arms bazaar, is a guerrilla stronghold. It has been the scene of numerous clashes since early last year.
The rebels are waging an Iraq-style insurgency of roadside bombings, ambushes and assassinations against the fragile interim government and its Ethiopian allies. At least 28 people have died in the rubble-strewn capital in the last three days.
The latest fighting broke out as relatives buried a local reporter, Nasteh Dahir, who worked for the BBC and the Associated Press and was shot dead by two suspected insurgents on Saturday in Somalia's southern port town of Kismayu.
Dahir (36) had been vice-president of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) for three years, and the group said he had been receiving death threats from anonymous callers.
"We will not stop our work because of these criminals," NUSOJ Secretary-General Omar Faruk Osman said in a statement. Press freedom activists accused the government of failing to protect reporters in Africa's deadliest country for journalists.