MOGADISHU (AFP) — Six more people died Sunday in a Mogadishu hospital from wounds sustained in the previous day's fighting, bringing the total death toll to 16, a doctor said.
Another 39 people were still being treated at Madina hospital after Saturday's clashes between Islamist insurgents and government forces. The initial toll from the fighting was 10.
"Six people have died so far from injuries they sustained when mortars hit Bakara market yesterday," said Ali Adde, a doctor in the hospital.
"We received a total of 45 people, 37 of them with serious injuries."
Saturday's clashes erupted after Ethiopia-backed Somali troops responded to mortar shells fired by Islamist insurgents on the presidential compound.
Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin was holding talks with Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed there at the time.
The government has initiated measures with clan leaders in Mogadishu to allow the flashpoint Bakara neighbourhood to police itself so long as insurgents are kept at bay.
In the Kenyan capital, UN Special Representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah held talks with top Islamist officials in a bid to launch peace talks for Somalia.
Ould-Abdallah met Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Nairobi at the sidelines of a World Bank-organised forum that was discussing the financial situation in the failed African state, an AFP correspondent said.
The meeting was "an important and constructive step towards helping Somalia return to peace and stability," Ould-Abdallah explained.
Thousands of people, many of them civilians, have died there over the past year in violence between Ethiopian-backed government troops and insurgents.
Ethiopia's military came to the rescue of the embattled Somali transitional government in late 2006 to oust an Islamist militia that briefly controlled large parts of the country and imposed strict Sharia law.
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