More than 80 die in Mogadishu fighting: rights group

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

More than 80 die in Mogadishu fighting: rights group
Sun Apr 20, 2008 1:31pm EDT

By Abdi Sheikh and Aweys Yusuf

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali Islamist insurgents and
government troops exchanged mortar fire on Sunday and a
prominent human rights group said 81 people had been
killed in the past 24 hours in some of the heaviest clashes
in months.

The fighting was fiercest in the Islamist stronghold of
northern Mogadishu where the government and its Ethiopian
allies are trying to flush out the remnants of a sharia courts
movement ousted from the capital at the end of 2006.

"Eighty-one people were killed and 119 were wounded in the
violence in Mogadishu since Saturday," Sudan Ali Ahmed,
chairman of the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization,
told Reuters by telephone.

-snip-

There was no independent verification of the death toll, but
residents had reported escalating clashes since Saturday.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2058001220080420