Troops shell Somali market, killing 11

At least 11 people were killed in Mogadishu yesterday when troops at the Villa Somalia presidential palace returned fire against Islamist insurgents who attacked it with mortar bombs, witnesses said. President Abdullahi Yusuf was there at the time, an aide told Reuters, but no one in the hilltop compound was hurt.

Residents said Ethiopian soldiers guarding Yusuf then launched shells at the city's Bakara market, killing a number of people.

"Seven people including a woman died in the money changers' area when more than eight mortar bombs struck several parts of Bakara," shopkeeper Muse Ahmed told Reuters by telephone.

"Four people were killed inside the market's food section," said another market trader.

The market is notorious for its open-air arms bazaar, and has been the site of frequent skirmishes between guerrilla fighters and government troops backed by Ethiopian forces. Somalia's interim government has struggled to impose its authority on the Horn of Africa nation, and in the capital it has been rocked by an Iraq-style insurgency of artillery strikes, assassinations and roadside bombings.