Gunfire rattles in Mogadishu, corpse in street

MOGADISHU, Jan 10 (Reuters) Sporadic gunfire rattled round an area of Mogadishu today housing allied Ethiopian and Somali troops, and a corpse lay in the street, witnesses said.

Residents cowered behind walls in the Kilometre Four area after the latest shooting began before dawn.

Kilometre Four includes a building housing Ethiopian and Somali troops, which was attacked yesterday, witnesses said.

''There is a body of a 27-year-old man lying on the road and no one can pick it up because the road is closed off,'' one resident said.

Government troops cordoned off a stretch of the main road and were searching buildings in the area for assailants who fired rocket-propelled grenades in yesterday's attack, a government source said.

''It reminds me of the days of the warlords when they fought over K4 and you could not move from one corner to another,'' another resident said.

A Red Crescent aid worker said he was unable to go near the area in search of possible injured or dead from today's new flare-up. ''The government soldiers and Ethiopians just sent us back,'' he told Reuters.

Normally a bustling area, supermarkets and coffee shops were closed and there was no sight of the minibuses that usually throng the dusty streets.

Ethiopian troops are in the Somali capital, helping protect the interim government, while it awaits the arrival of an African peacekeeping force to help stabilise the country in anarchy since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.

Somali officials said yesterday that many people were killed in Somalia in a US air strike targeting al Qaeda suspects among fleeing Islamist fighters.

REUTERS AKJ KP1212