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MOGADISHU, Somalia(AP)
A missile hit a hospital ward packed with civilians wounded in
fighting between Islamic insurgents and Ethiopian troops allied to
the Somali government, but it was not immediately clear if it
caused additional casualties, an official said.
The ward already was housing 20-30 wounded adults, said Wilhelm
Huber, regional director for the SOS Children's Villages. The
children had been evacuated earlier, he said.
Five missiles had actually hit the grounds in the lunchtime
attack, but only one struck a ward, Huber said. People were
wounded, but he did not have details because of the chaotic
situation and because there already were wounded in the ward at the
time.
"What is happening now cannot go on," Huber told The
Associated Press.
He said he did not believe the hospital had been deliberately
targeted, but that it clearly came from government forces because
of the flight path of the missiles.
"People are desperate," Huber said. "This is a
tragic situation."
At least 13 shells have hit the grounds of the hospital and
children's orphanage in the last six days, including the latest
attack, he said.
Earlier in the day, civilians were caught in the crossfire as
the Somali government's Ethiopian backers used tanks and heavy
artillery to pound insurgent strongholds, witnesses said.
Ethiopian military officials met with elders of Mogadishu's
dominant clan to try to broker a peace, said Abdullahi Sheik
Hassan, a spokesman with Mogadishu's powerful Hawiye clan.
Hundreds have been killed in eight straight days of fighting.
Analysts said U.S. and Ethiopian military intervention in
Somalia has destroyed a fragile stability in this battle-scarred
nation, as more than a week of unrelenting violence trapped
desperate civilians in their homes with gunfire and artillery
shells raining down outside.
The leaders of an Islamic movement that was driven from power in
December by the government and its Ethiopian backers are still
active, and popular support for the group is unlikely to melt away,
according to a report by the British-based think tank Chatham
House.
The Council of Islamic Courts ruled much of southern Somalia for
six relatively peaceful months in 2006 before being ousted by
Somali troops and their Ethiopian allies, along with U.S. special
forces. Radicals in the council rejected a secular government and
have been accused of having ties to al-Qaida.
"Whatever the short term future holds, the complex social
forces behind the rise of the Islamic Courts will not go
away," said Cedric Barnes and Huran Hassan of Chatham
House.
Hundreds have been killed in eight straight days of fighting
despite U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging both sides to end
the violence and allow humanitarian assistance to reach the
needy.
Late Tuesday, an extremist group claimed responsibility for car
bomb attacks earlier in the day against Ethiopian troops and a
hotel housing lawmakers loyal to Somalia's interim government.
Known as the Young Mujahedeen Movement, the group is part of the
Shabab, whose leader Aden Hashi Ayro was recently chosen to head
Somalia's al-Qaida cell and was one of the people targeted by a
U.S. airstrike in Somalia in January.
The U.N. says more than 340,000 of Mogadishu's 2 million
residents have fled since February, sending streams of people into
squalid camps with little to eat, no shelter and disease spreading.
The war-ravaged country is suffering its worst humanitarian crisis
in its recent history, according to the U.N.
Human rights groups say more than 350 people have been killed in
the last eight days, the majority civilians. The last bid to wipe
out the insurgency in March left more than a 1,000 dead, said local
rights groups and traditional elders.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Tuesday he believed
the exodus and the death toll had been exaggerated.
"I have been stuck inside for the last three days and have
no food left," mother of nine, Hawa Mualim told AP by
telephone, saying there was fighting outside her house in northern
Mogadishu and she was too scared to venture outside.
Western and U.N. diplomats fear Somalia's government is
holding up vital aid supplies to people fleeing the fighting. The
government has been demanding to inspect all food and medical
shipments, holding up potentially lifesaving aid, European and
American officials said in letters obtained Tuesday by the AP.
U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said representatives of his
office and other U.N. agencies met in the southern town of Baidoa
on Monday with a newly established Inter-Ministerial Committee set
up by the transitional government to discuss the lack of
humanitarian access and the lack of cooperation from the
government.
At the meeting, Holmes said, "they have assured us of full
support for humanitarian access and humanitarian workers,"
including to all airstrips, which he welcomed but cautiously.
"The reassurances we received yesterday were good as far as
they go, but they have to be translated into action," he
said.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991,
when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned
on one another, throwing the country into anarchy. The current
administration was formed in 2004 but has struggled to extend its
control over the country.
___
Associated Press writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy in Nairobi, Kenya
and Maggie Michael in Cairo, Egypt contributed to this report.
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