MOGADISHU, June 1 (Xinhua) — Ten people were killed, including four policemen whose vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, while twenty others injured as renewed fighting ravaged south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, police and witnesses said Monday.
The explosion by a remotely-controlled roadside bomb targeted a Somali police pickup truck on a routine patrol in the K4 area in the south of Mogadishu, killing four of the police occupants and injured ten civilian passers-by, Somali police chief Abdi Hassan Awale Qaybded told reporters in Mogadishu.
In the north of Mogadishu three Somali government soldiers and two insurgent fighters were killed as the Somali government forces clashed with insurgent rebels controlling a police post in Yaqshid district.
Somali government forces managed to retake the important area in the north of Mogadishu including a police Station previously held by insurgent fighters.
Local ambulance services said they ferried nearly 10 wounded civilians in the fighting in the north of Mogadishu while an ambulance driver confirmed the death of one of the wounded civilians on arrival at the hospital.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the fatal blast but Islamist insurgents have been carrying out attacks against Somali government forces and African Union peacekeeping forces.
The latest clashes were part of on-going confrontations which began early last month between Somali government forces and Islamist insurgent fighters in Mogadishu.
The Somali government accuses insurgent fighters of having foreign fighters in their rank, a charge denied by the Islamist rebels.
Somalia has not had a functioning government for the past 18 years since the overthrow of the late Somali leader Mohamed Siyad Barre in 1991.
