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Fighting in Somalia causes hundreds to desert their homes

Hundreds of residents fled their homes during a second day of fighting between Islamic insurgents and Somali and Ethiopian troops in which at least four people were killed and six wounded.

In the southern port town of Kismayo unidentified gunmen threw a bomb late on Thursday at a police station, killing one person, an official said.

Government officials vowed on Thursday to continue fighting the insurgents in Mogadishu who they said are led by the newly chosen head of Somalia's al-Qaeda cell, Aden Hashi Ayro. The suspected al-Qaeda leader is one of the people the US targeted in a January airstrike in Somalia.

Unidentified gunmen threw a bomb at the main police station in the southern town of Kismayo, said Mayor Ibrahim Mohamed Yusuf. One woman was killed and another woman and her two children were injured in the blast because the bomb missed the station building and hit a wall separating the station from a private home, Yusuf said.

In Mogadishu, gunfire could still be heard intermittently on Thursday evening, but the fighting seemed to be less fierce than the previous day's battles, during which at least 21 people were killed and more than 120 people wounded.

Residents leaving their homes on Thursday boarded minivans or taxis, with the poorer ones carrying their belongings on their heads and in plastic bags. They were moving to safer parts of the city or leaving Mogadishu altogether.

Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and heavy machine-guns and government troops responded with artillery and machine-gun fire in the battles in northern and southern parts of Mogadishu, witnesses said.

Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle said the Somali government had gathered intelligence that Ayro, a top leader of the ousted Islamic courts, had been directing the insurgency in Mogadishu and was recently named the head of the al-Qaeda cell in Somalia.
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