Rival Somali Militias Trade Artillery Fire in 5th Day of Fighting

Militia fighters loyal to faction leader Ali Mahdi Mohamed bombarded his rival’s palace Tuesday in the fifth day of fighting in Mogadishu. Thirteen people were killed and 23 wounded, hospital sources said.

Ali Mahdi’s fighters--one of several groups battling for control of the lawless capital--used pickup trucks with mounted weapons to attack Hussein Mohammed Aidid’s troops at the airport and other positions in the southern part of the city.

Aidid’s fighters retaliated by firing artillery shells into northern Mogadishu, Ali Mahdi’s stronghold.

There were no reports of injuries in the palace. Aidid’s whereabouts at the time of the attack were unknown.

Among the dead was a woman in a restaurant hit by a shell.

The fatalities brought to at least 99 the number of people reported killed since the latest flare-up began Friday. In the absence of any formal authority in Somalia, it was impossible to ascertain the exact number of deaths.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said about 900 wounded had been admitted to several medical facilities since Friday and that more than 70 of the injured had died.

“We are appalled by the apparently high number of civilian casualties, which are a result of indiscriminate firing into places like markets, where ordinary people gather,” Red Cross spokesman Fred Grimm said in Nairobi, Kenya.

Somalia has had no functional central government since the 1991 ouster of the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Since then, the East African nation has disintegrated into a number of fiefdoms controlled by warring clans.

Joining Ali Mahdi’s fighters are those of an ally, faction leader Osman Hassan Ali. The two men were allies of Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, Hussein’s father, who died in August of wounds suffered during a gun battle.

The younger Aidid--a former U.S. Marine reservist--succeeded his father as faction leader and self-proclaimed president, a position Ali Mahdi also claims.