Wars in the World

At least 21 people have been killed and scores of others injured in a series of street battles in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, sources say.

Shells fired by African Union (AU) peacekeepers hit Bakara market, in central Mogadishu, during the fighting, Al Jazeera has learned.

“Heavy artillery shelling is ongoing and has left 70 people wounded”, Al Jazeera’s Jama Nur reported from Mogadishu.

Ba-Hoku Baridgye, a spokesman for the AU mission, said one of its soldiers had died in the fighting, while they killed about 25 Somali fighters.

“We killed around 25 Islamist fighters in Hodan and Holwadag districts today and we lost one soldier while two others were injured,” he told AFP.

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One of the FARC’s top commanders, “Mono Jojoy,” was killed by Colombian state forces. According to Caracol Radio, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed the guerrilla leader’s death from New York City.

According to several Colombian media sources, the head of the FARC’s Eastern Bloc and member of its Secretariat was killed in an air strike in a region called La Macarena in the central Colombian Meta department, 200 miles south of Bogota.

In the attack, some 20 other guerrillas were reportedly also killed.

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The clashes are continuing between the army and Al-Qaeda in Yemen’s Southeastern Province of Shabwa, the Defense and Interior Ministries as well as Shabwa Governor and local officials have said.

The battlefield is the Al-Hawtah town, the largest in Shabwa, and the confrontations are running not far from the area where the botched bombing of the LNG pipeline took place last week, they said.

Among the terrorist fighters are foreigners, and militants took over homes in the area and displaced the people. According to Shabwa Governor Ali Al-Ahmedi and Secretary General of the Local Council, who also said that the army and special counter terrorism forces are besieging the region and will not leave it until the terrorists surrender.

The confrontations started on Friday after suspected al-Qaeda militants ambushed a security patrol killing and injuring soldiers and civilians on Thursday, the Interior Ministry has previously said.

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http://www.yemenpost … SubID=2601&MainCat=3

Several thousand Somali forces trained in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya will open a second front against Islamist insurgents by year-end in Somalia’s south and central regions, the prime minister said Sunday.

The forces will try to capture key towns including the port of Kismayo, which is believed to generate a substantial amount of revenue for the insurgency, Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke told reporters in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

Kenya has a force of 2,000 Somali refugees stationed in northern Kenya, and Ethiopia trained a force of 1,000 fighters under a German-funded program.

“Those forces have now completed their training and we are expecting them to come back and really now open a different front,” Sharmarke said. “Unless you open different fronts you’re not going to end this war.”

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Twenty-two Colombian guerrillas were killed Sunday in an airstrike, the country’s defense minister said.

The Colombian air force bombing was part of an operation against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in southern Colombia, Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera said. The operation was ongoing and more bodies could be found, he said.

Rebels in the area had killed eight police officers in an attack earlier this month.

Sunday’s bombing campaign was one of the strongest blows against the FARC in recent memory.

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http://edition.cnn.c … rc.deaths/index.html