President’s palace hit by mortar fire
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Insurgents fired mortar shells at the Somali presidential palace in Mogadishu, where a top Ethiopian official was meeting with the president, and witnesses said return fire from Somali and Ethiopian soldiers killed six civilians in the capital’s main market.
A security staff member at the presidential palace said President Abdullahi Yusuf and Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Seyoum Mesfin were unharmed.
Spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon declined to comment on the attack, in a capital under increasing pressure from Islamic insurgents. Ethiopia is Yusuf’s principal ally.
Ethiopian troops have been in Mogadishu since December 2006, when they helped drive away an Islamic group that had taken control of the south.
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