MOGADISHU, Sept 22: Mortars slammed into a Mogadishu market on Monday in the second day of fighting that has killed at least 42 people, witnesses said.

Islamist insurgents are battling the Somali government and their Ethiopian military backers in a nearly two-year conflict that some are calling Africa’s ‘Iraq’.

Fighting worsened at the weekend, even as UN officials sought to broker a ceasefire between government and opposition representatives in neighbouring Djibouti.

In the biggest incident, mortars hit packed Bakara market, horrifying shoppers and killing about 30 people, residents said.

Ali Dhere, chairman of Bakara business committee, said government-fired shells hit the market, which lies in a densely-populated area considered a stronghold of the Islamist insurgents, after rebel attacks on the presidential palace.

“We don’t know why they are targeting Bakara because this is a market, a public place,” he said.

Government officials could not be immediately reached, and the Ethiopian military never comments on fighting.

Bakara traders described a terrible scene.

“We saw four people die on the spot. Their flesh and bones were scattered into pieces,” said clothes seller Nur Omar.

Abdi Nur Hassan, who runs an electronics stall, said two missiles landed nearby. “I have seen six people die, some of them missing legs and hands. We collected their bodies, but it is difficult to separate them,” he said.

As well as the presidential palace, the Somali rebels also attacked two bases of African Union (AU) peacekeepers, and shelled the city’s main airport on Monday where a commercial flight defied a ban by the militant al Shabaab group to land.

Residents also said at least a dozen people had died in fighting on Sunday. “A missile hit a neighbour’s house and killed nine people in the same family,” one resident, Farhiya Abdullahi, said.

After being chased away from their power-base, Mogadishu, Islamists launched an insurgency in early 2007 that has killed nearly 10,000 civilians and an unknown number of combatants.

They have become increasingly bold in the last two months, stepping up attacks in the Somali capital and capturing the strategic southern port of Kismayu.

Al Shabaab is on Washington’s terrorism list, and western security services say the Islamists have close links to Al Qaeda. Rebel leaders, however, depict themselves as nationalists fighting an unwanted occupation by Ethiopia.

During lulls in the fighting, Mogadishu residents rushed their wounded to the city’s few clinics. Staff at Madina hospital said they had admitted 65 wounded people since Sunday.—Reuters