Seven children killed in Somalia shelling

MOGADISHU: Seven children were among ten people killed in shelling by Somali government forces in Mogadishu today as the troops backed by African Union peacekeepers fired mortars into districts held by Islamist insurgents.

The seven children were struck by shells while playing football in the capital’s southern Wardhigley neighbourhood, witnesses and medical officials said.

Two other civilians died of their wounds in the city’s Medina hospital where 13 people were taken for treatment, the hospital’s director Mohamed Yusuf Hasan told AFP, while another civilian was killed by a stray bullet. The shelling was in retaliation for an attack by the hardline Islamists who had fired shells at the bases of the AU and government forces. Shebab militants and their Hezb al-Islam allies vowed to topple the government of President Shariff Sheikh Ahmed when they launched a deadly onslaught in May.