Mogadishu mortar blasts kill mother and 3 children

MOGADISHU, Sep 10 (Reuters) Mortar bombs fired by suspected Islamist insurgents killed a woman and her three children in Mogadishu in the first such attacks in the Somali capital in weeks, witnesses said today.

Several other people were injured in the shelling late yesterday, which locals said appeared aimed at the presidential palace Villa Somalia but struck residential areas instead.

''One of the three mortars landed on a home near ours and killed a mother and her three children,'' said resident Fardawasa Abdi, adding that the children were aged six to eight.

''Their father was seriously wounded in the throat and their grandmother was also wounded in the face.'' Residents said the mortars hit two other homes, causing more injuries.

Somalia's interim government is struggling to impose its authority on the Horn of Africa nation since it routed an Islamist movement from the capital over the New Year.

Remnants of the sharia courts group are now blamed for an Iraq-style insurgency of assassinations and roadside bombs targeting security forces and their Ethiopian military allies.

''Insurgents fired the mortars to terrorise civilians. They did not mean to target the presidential palace but wanted to terrorise people,'' said Ali Nur, a senior police officer.

He said the bombs were fired from a neighbourhood more than two kilometres from the hilltop palace.

OPPOSITION CONFERENCE BLAMES ETHIOPIA In Eritrea, Somali opposition figures said ''liberation forces'' had inflicted casualties on Ethiopian soldiers, who had been deliberately targeting civilians.

''Attacks have been carried out by liberation forces in several areas of Mogadishu with heavy casualties by (Ethiopian) occupiers and their stooges,'' Zakariya Mahamud Abdi, a spokesman for the opposition conference, told reporters.

''(The Ethiopians) have indiscriminately shelled areas ... and there have been civilian casualties.'' The talks in Eritrea -- Ethiopia's neighbour and arch-enemy -- have brought together 400 delegates, including senior Islamists of the courts' movement, to dissident ex-legislators, a former deputy prime minister and Somali diaspora members.

The meeting, which is expected to end on Wednesday, aims to form an umbrella group of Somali opposition.

Somalia, with a population of about nine million, has had no central government since it slid into civil war after the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

REUTERS GL PM1625