MOGADISHU, Somalia — Extremist rebels in Somalia said Friday they will continue attacking African Union peacekeepers, after fighting this week killed more than 20 people and left hospitals so crowded that patients were being treated in tents.

Sporadic fighting persisted in the capital, Mogadishu, on Friday and witnesses reported at least five people died.

“We have been fighting the so-called peacekeepers and we will keep at it,” said Ali Mohamed Rage, spokesman for the al-Shabab rebel group, which is believed to have ties to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab denies any ties.

Fighting in the Somali capital killed 25 people Wednesday and Thursday, leaving corpses in the streets of a city where a bloody insurgency is intensifying.

The government and rebels who want to install an Islamic state in the east African country blame each other for instigating the violence. More than 4,000 African Union peacekeepers are here, but they come under regular attack and are generally confined to protecting government installations.

Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991 when the overthrow of a dictatorship plunged the country into chaos. The vacuum has also allowed pirates to operate freely around Somalia’s 1,900-mile (3,060-kilometre) coastline.

Over the past two months, Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed’s government has come under heavy attacks from insurgents who have pounded government positions with mortars and targeted senior officials in suicide attacks.

Source: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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