MOGADISHU, Somalia - Mortars slammed into Somalia's capital -- including a mosque and several homes -- killing at least 35 people as pro-government Islamist fighters clashed with gunmen who want to topple the Western-backed government, witnesses and hospital officials said Sunday.
It was some of the worst fighting in weeks in one of the most violent cities in the world, with both sides pounding the capital with mortars and machine-gunfire.
An Associated Press reporter counted at least 15 corpses in the streets of Mogadishu on Sunday after fighting started late Saturday and continued into Sunday afternoon. Hospital officials and witnesses in other parts of the city said another five people were killed. Later in the day, a mortar hit a mosque and a nearby home, killing 15 more people, said witness Yasir Mohamed, who counted the corpses and received minor injuries.
Residents were streaming out of the capital seeeking safety. Ali Mohamed, a 20-year-old resident of Mogadishu, said he was losing all hope for his nation.
"The future is bleak," he said.
Another witness to the violence, Abdinasir Ali, said he recognized six corpses as members of the same family, who were killed when a mortar shell hit their house early Sunday.
Medina hospital official Dahir Mohamed Mohamud said 60 people have been admitted this weekend.
The violence pitted the pro-government fighters against those allied to al-Shabab, an insurgent group seeking to overthrow the Western-backed government.
National Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden said Sunday that sporadic violence was continuing.
Somalia, an impoverished country in the Horn of Africa, has been in chaos since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Rival clans then turned on each other. Since late 2006, insurgents have been trying to topple the weak government. And in recent years, piracy has exploded off the lawless coast.
The U.S. worries that Somalia could be a terrorist breeding ground, particularly since Osama bin Laden declared his support for al-Shabab. It accuses al-Shabab of harboring the al Qaeda-linked terrorists who allegedly blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
At a conference last month in Brussels, President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed pledged to do "everything imaginable" to stabilize Somalia.
Ahmed, elected by parliament in January, is a former fighter with the Islamic insurgency. He has been trying to broker peace with warring groups and gain legitimacy, but his administration wields little control outside Mogadishu, and needs help from African peacekeepers to do even that.
Fighters opposed to his government see the 4,350 AU peacekeepers as "foreign invaders" and obstacles to peace.
