By Salad Duhul
Associated Press
Thursday, April 26, 2007

MOGADISHU, Somalia, April 25 -- A missile hit a hospital ward packed with civilians wounded in fighting between Islamic insurgents and Ethiopian troops allied to the Somali government, an official said. It was not immediately clear whether the missile caused additional casualties.

The ward housed 20 to 30 wounded adults, said Wilhelm Huber, regional director for SOS Children's Villages. Injured children had been evacuated earlier, he said.

Five missiles landed on the hospital grounds in the lunchtime attack, but only one struck a patient ward, Huber said.

He said he did not believe the hospital had been deliberately targeted, but added that the missiles clearly came from government forces because of their flight path. "People are desperate," Huber said. "This is a tragic situation."

At least 13 shells have hit the grounds of the hospital and a children's orphanage in the last six days, including the latest attack, he said.

Earlier in the day, civilians were caught in crossfire as Ethiopian troops used tanks and heavy artillery to pound insurgent strongholds, witnesses said. Hundreds of people have been killed in eight days of fighting.

Ethiopian military officials met with elders of Mogadishu's dominant clan to try to broker a peace, said Abdullahi Sheik Hassan, a spokesman for Mogadishu's powerful Hawiye clan.

The leaders of an Islamic movement that was driven from power in December by the government and its Ethiopian backers are still active, and popular support for the group is unlikely to melt away, according to a report by Chatham House, a foreign affairs research center in London.

The Islamic Courts movement ruled much of southern Somalia for six relatively peaceful months in 2006. The Bush administration backed its ouster, claiming that some of its members had ties to al-Qaeda.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has urged both sides to end the violence and allow humanitarian assistance to reach the needy.