Fighting kills at least 45 in Somali capital

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali government forces attacked rebel strongholds in Mogadishu Friday, starting battles across the capital that killed at least 45 people, the highest daily death toll for months.

Neighbouring states and Western governments fear Somalia, which has been mired in civil war for 18 years, could become a haven for militants linked to al Qaeda.

"At least 45 people including 28 civilians died in today's fighting," Ali Yasin Gedi, vice chairman of Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, told Reuters.

"One hundred and eighty two people, including civilians and the warring groups were also injured."

Residents braced for more fighting Saturday as rebel reinforcements rushed to confront the government offensive. As night fell, sporadic gunfire echoed over the crumbling city.

"The fighting in Mogadishu will intensify the coming days," an opposition source said.

Residents scuttled across the dusty streets and sheltered by walls as heavy gunfire shook the capital. Some children milled around near a dead body, its blood draining into the sand.

Fighters wearing headscarves with ammunition belts draped over their shoulders loitered on a corner as a battered 4x4 pickup with a heavy machinegun on top raced past.

The government says there is little hope of talks with the Shabaab gunmen trying to topple it. The administration says the rebels have no political agenda and have hundreds of foreign Islamist militants in their ranks.

"The opposition groups have been provoking us for the last three weeks," Defence Minister Mohamed Abdi Gandi said.

"We shall continue fighting this opposition with foreign ideologies. They want to destroy our government by the use of violence but it will not be," he told reporters.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, an influential Islamist opposition leader who once ran Mogadishu with President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, also said his forces would battle on.

"We shall defeat the government soon, God willing," he told Reuters in his Mogadishu home. "We should not be deceived by Westerners like Sharif."

REBEL STRONGHOLD SURROUNDED

The heaviest fighting for months has killed scores of civilians and uprooted tens of thousands in the last two weeks.

"I saw masked men running away carrying the bodies of four of their friends," Halima Osman, a mother-of-three who lives in the city's Bakara Market, said.

Residents said Friday's pre-dawn assaults looked to be a concerted effort by pro-government forces to seize back control of strategic sites. One man said government troops had encircled Bakara Market, al Shabaab's biggest stronghold in the city.

Hassan Mahdi, a spokesman for Hizbul Islam, another Islamist guerrilla group battling the government, told Reuters by telephone that troops had struck at their positions too.

"Al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam are counter-attacking. We have pushed them back in some places. There are casualties, but I can't say how many. We are in the middle of fighting," Mahdi said as heavy gunfire thundered in the background.

Local journalist Abdirizak Warsame was killed in the crossfire as he walked to work at his radio station.

"A stray bullet hit him in the head and he died on the spot," Shabelle Radio boss Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe told Reuters.

Fighting has killed at least 17,700 civilians and driven more than 1 million from their homes since the start of 2007. About 3 million Somalis survive on emergency food aid.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says 49,000 people have now fled clashes in Mogadishu in the past two weeks.

(Additional reporting by Ibrahim Mohamed and Mohamed Ahmed; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by David Clarke and Angus MacSwan)