MOGADISHU, Somalia – An assailant threw a hand grenade at a top Somali military officer in Mogadishu on Wednesday, but missed the official and killed a civilian and wounded two government soldiers instead, police said.

At least three other people died and 13 suffered wounds from violence in or near the capital of this Horn of Africa nation, where a U.N.-backed government is struggling to impose control after 16 years of anarchy and clan fighting that followed the ouster of a dictatorship.

Three men armed with pistols fired into the air then fatally shot two civilians at Mogadishu's Bakara market before spraying bullets to cover their escape, businessman Abdi Haji Dalel said.

In Afgoye, a town 19 miles south of the capital, two men with a grenade attacked government troops collecting taxes at a busy livestock market, killing one soldier and injuring 13 people, said Mohamed Ali Yare, a trader.

A Mogadishu resident, Liban Ahmed, reported seeing a land mine blow up under a vehicle carrying government troops but didn't know if there were any casualties.

“We saw the car sent into the air by the explosion, with huge balls of smoke, then one of the soldiers from the car stood on the road and began firing indiscriminately. We ran away,” he said.

The Mogadishu area is gripped in fighting between insurgents and government troops supported by the army of neighboring Ethiopia. Many of the insurgents are linked to Islamic militants who took control of the city last summer but were chased out by Ethiopian troops in December.

Source: AP