Somalis Hurl Rocks at U.S. Troops : Africa: The crowd mistakenly thought Marines had shot 6 citizens in capital. Incident underscores tensions.

In the ugliest outburst of anti-American sentiment since U.S. forces landed, about 200 angry Somalis showered troops with rocks and tried to block the port with burning tires Friday in the mistaken belief that Marines had shot six Somalis, U.S. spokesmen said.

U.S. military officials denied that their forces fired a single shot during the day, and said the Marines intervened only to rescue injured Somalis from inter-clan warfare and get them to a doctor.

But the incident underscored the tensions that persist and may be worsening as American forces near the beginning of the third month of Operation Restore Hope, the U.S.-led international effort to ensure that relief aid reaches starving Somalis.

On Thursday, a U.S. Marine riding in a military vehicle shot and killed a 13-year-old boy in Mogadishu as he tried to throw an unidentified parcel at the vehicle, U.S. military officials said. The parcel was never found.

Since the U.S.-led task force disembarked here Dec. 9, soldiers from member nations have shot and killed more than a dozen other Somalis.

Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Ron Stokes said Friday’s unrest outside the Mogadishu port, now bustling with incoming cargoes of food relief, began at about 10 a.m. with an armed battle between two of Somalia’s rival clan groups, the Murusade and the Habir Gedir, over housing.

The Marines, who have a large detachment quartered at the Mogadishu soccer stadium about a mile north of the neighborhood where the fighting broke out, sent two helicopters and a reinforced platoon of at least 50 men to the scene, Stokes said.

Up to 300 Somalis may have been involved in the fight over the buildings, which has the subtext of rival groupings trying to stake out political turf in Mogadishu.

At one point in the clash, the Marines intervened to rescue six wounded people, who were evacuated to a military field hospital, Stokes said. The Somalis’ condition in the evening was not known.

Stokes and other Marine officers went to the hotel frequented by foreign journalists here Friday evening to report the U.S. military’s latest version of events, after previously blaming the port riot on another, apparently unrelated, shooting.

After three hours of negotiations between elders from both rival clan groups and the Marines, the Somalis involved in the housing dispute agreed to meet today for additional talks and then dispersed, Stokes said.

The quarrel has substantial political implications, because it involves factions with the backing of the country’s two most powerful warlords and rivals for mastery of Mogadishu--Mohammed Farah Aidid, a member of the Habir Gedir and the man in charge of the capital’s south, and Ali Mahdi Mohamed, who is allied with the Murusade and controls the north.

Meanwhile, information that the Marines had shot the injured Somalis and had been seen spiriting them away apparently traveled to the port area, where scores of idle young men routinely gather. In the afternoons, many chew qat, a mild narcotic, and tempers can flare.

As the mood got ugly outside the port gate, a team from the U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations group was summoned but failed to persuade the crowd to move on, Stokes said.

A platoon of U.S. Army Military Police, two Marine amphibious assault vehicles and a group of soldiers from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were called in to guard the gate.

The protesters, who ranged in age from early teens to early 20s, rolled truck tires into the middle of the road and set them on fire, and threw stones and chunks of concrete at U.S. military vehicles and personnel.

One Marine was cut over the eye by a rock and another was struck in the knee, Stokes said. The only shot fired during the encounter was a single warning round by a UAE soldier, Stokes said.

The Marine spokesman, asked if he thought discontent over the U.S. presence here is on the rise, replied: “The fact they were throwing rocks at us and not shooting at us shows the change (for the better).”

Earlier Friday, the Marines had said the unrest outside the port was apparently sparked by the shooting of a 16-year-old Somali within 75 yards of the gate.

A post-mortem by a Somali doctor determined that the youth could not have been fired on by a member of the 22-nation coalition, Col. Jack Klimp, deputy Marine commander in Somalia, reported.