At least 18 people have been killed in gunbattles in southern Somalia’s Kismayu, residents said on Saturday, in the heaviest fighting the disputed port city has seen in more than four years. The clashes, the first since several former warlords staked rival claims on the lucrative port and fertile hinterlands in May, has stoked fears among locals of a return to the clan wars that tipped the country into anarchy two decades ago. Residents counted at least 13 bodies, nearly all militiamen, in the sandy streets of two neighbourhoods which witnessed the brunt of Saturday’s fighting. Five people were killed a day earlier when the clashes first broke out. “The Ras Kamboni militia now controls this part of the city,” Bile Nur, a resident of Kismayu’s Calanleey district told Reuters by telephone. “Residents are burying the dead of the militia driven out while Ras Kamboni are burying theirs.” |