BELETWEIN, Somalia May 8 (Garowe Online) - At least 13 people including a senior Islamic Courts militia commander were killed yesterday in heavy battles in a remote part of central Somalia, witnesses and local sources reported.

The fighting erupted Wednesday afternoon in villages located between the towns of Bulo Burte and Beletwein, the provincial capital of Hiran region.

An Ethiopian army convoy that left Bulo Burte and was en route to the border via Beletwein was ambushed by Islamist insurgents, sparking the hours-long battle.

Ethiopian soldiers

“Sheikh Amin Abdulle Barkadle was martyred…he was the [Islamic] Courts leader in Hiran [region],” Hussein Gagale, another Islamist commander, told local media.

Residents in villages affected by the battle described horrific scenes of shells slamming into nomadic villages and killing civilians.

One witness told Garowe Online that he personally saw the dead bodies of 3 Ethiopian soldiers, although he would not comment on reports of army trucks incinerated by insurgent rockets.

Another witness, Moallim Ahmed, said: “I saw the dead bodies of at least four people, including kids and elders, who fled away from the fighting but were killed by a shell faraway."

A spokesman for the Islamists said 5 fighters were killed during the battle.

The Ethiopian army convoy was last reported to have reached a military base in the outskirts of Beletwein, the regional capital that has lacked a ruling governor since last month.

Somalia has been mired in armed conflict since the early 1990s, when warlords overthrew a military dictator and plunged the country into one of Africa's longest-running civil wars.

In late 2006, Ethiopian troops deployed into Somalia to help install the fragile interim government in Mogadishu after ousting the capital's Islamic Courts rulers.

The Islamists have since regrouped and are blamed for an ongoing insurgency that has killed thousands of people and displaced more than half Mogadishu's population.

Source: Garowe Online