Mogadishu: Twelve Somalis were killed today in three separate incidents in Mogadishu and in a town northwest of the capital, police and witnesses said. Six people, including two civilians, were killed in the town of Wanlaweyn when police clashed with the military in a dispute over checkpoints, police said.

"We tried to tighten security in the region and we took control of several checkpoints on the road that leads to Mogadishu where the military was posted, so they fought us," Nuriye Ali Farah, police commissioner for the Lower Shabelle region, told AFP.

Witnesses told AFP that six people had died in the clash, two civilians and four security personnel. For his part, the police commissioner could only confirm that at least three members of the military had died in the skirmish.

Four other people died in clashes between Ethiopian-backed government forces and Islamist insurgents in the northern Mogadishu neighbourhood of Deyniile, witnesses said.

"The government forces were conducting security operations around Dibiyada when the insurgents attacked them, there was heavy fighting," eyewitness Mohamed Basher Ali told AFP.

He said four people were killed and at least seven others, including a child, were wounded in the fighting.

"I cannot say who they were but I stood over the dead bodies of four people and all of them were in civilian clothes," said Abdi Shukri Hasan, another resident.

Source : PTI