Heavy weapons fire rattled the Somali capital for a fourth day yesterday but with much less intensity, allowing residents who had been trapped since Thursday by the pitched battles to flee.
In the Ali Kamin neighborhood and the stadium area, where the fighting between the Ethiopian army and Islamist insurgents had been particularly fierce, residents were leaving their devastated homes, some with a few meager belongings, others with nothing at all.
Shells were still crashing down on residential areas and sporadic sniper fire rang out.
"There is still fighting over here. There are tanks everywhere. Shells are landing everywhere and this is very scary," said Hussein Ali, a resident of southern Mogadishu.
"There are very few residents in the battle zone. I cannot confirm the exact casualties, but a lot of people have been killed and others wounded," he added.
A correspondent saw the bodies of six civilians lying in the street.
In the stadium area, the scene of one of the deadliest clashes, homes had been totally destroyed by artillery fire and tanks.
In Ali Kamin, the burnt-out remains of an Ethiopian army truck could be seen, with the dead bodies of two soldiers lying nearby. An Ethiopian army tank was in position on the main crossroads and the charred remains of seven burnt-out civilian trucks could be seen.
No toll is available for the fighting since the Ethiopian army launched its drive to rid the capital of hostile militia, but the International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that dozens of civilians have been killed.
According to a toll compiled from witnesses and hospitals at least 70 people had been killed by yesterday. The fighting is the worst the city has seen for 15 years.
Residents said the toll could be much higher as other areas remained inaccessible.
The Ethiopians launched their offensive on Thursday against the remnants of an Islamist movement it helped the Somali transitional government to topple earlier this year and which has continued to carry out guerrilla-style attacks.
Since then, the Ethiopian and government troops faced a new kind of threat: Scattered militia, often in civilian dress, who have attacked government and Ethiopian positions with clockwork regularity.
On Saturday, residents said a battalion of Ethiopian troops had entered Somalia through the border post of Beledweyne to reinforce their colleagues in the deadly urban warfare that has seen the use of heavy weapons.
The fighting, which has defied international calls for a truce, shattered a feeble six-day ceasefire with the powerful Hawiye clan which has controlled Mogadishu since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Humanitarian groups have angrily condemned the latest flare-up, saying it has left civilians destitute.
The downing of an Ethiopian helicopter on Friday and the dragging of dead soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu this past week was a dark reminder of a failed UN-backed US peace operation in Somalia in the early 1990s.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of