Garowe Online (Garowe)
29 January 2008
Garowe — Insurgent fighters waging war on Somalia's transitional federal government killed two police officers Tuesday in a sneak attack, witnesses said.
The officers were standing guard at a road in Mogadishu's Hodan district when the suspected insurgents snuck up and shot them in the head.
Fighting erupted in the area immediately after the fatal shooting, with government police engaging the insurgents directly.
The police force withdrew from the fighting zone briefly, but returned moments later in force. The police were then able to pull their dead comrades from the scene, sources said.
One insurgent was killed and a second one wounded in the second gunfight with the police. The intense fighting lasted for nearly one hour, forcing vital roads to be shut off in the process, traders said.
In related news, insurgents attacked government troops near Mogadishu's main Bakara market overnight Monday.
Government forces were able to kill one of the attackers, who were forced to flee into the night.
At least 43 civilians with a variety of gunshot and shrapnel wounds were admitted to Mogadishu's Keysaney Hospital since last night, said hospital worker Ali Bile.
The total number of wounded victims at the hospital is now at 120 people, including women and children, he said.
Other wounded people were rushed to local hospitals, including Daynile Hospital and Medina Hospital.
Thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded since the Mogadishu insurgency sparked in January 2007, when Ethiopian troops deployed in the Somali capital to protect the interim government.
But Somalia's rebels have sworn to continue their guerrilla campaign until they force their archenemy, the Ethiopian army, to withdraw from Somali soil.
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