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MOGADISHU - A plane carrying 11 people helping African peacekeepers in Mogadishu burst into flames and crashed today during a third day of fighting in an insurgency many fear could plunge Somalia back into civil war.
Local private radio Shabelle said the plane, a Russian-made Ilyushin used in the region to transport both cargo and troops, was hit by a missile as it took off from Mogadishu.
"I saw with my eyes when the plane, which was flying low-level, was hit by a rocket and then fell to the ground," Shabelle reporter Maryan Hashi said.
Witnesses described seeing the plane on fire in mid-air, but could not confirm that it was shot at.
"One of the wings exploded in the air ... When it hit the ground, another explosion occurred," said Hassan Mahamud Jama, a resident of the area. "There was smoke everywhere."
A witness said he had encountered one survivor wandering dazed among dead bodies and the wreckage of the plane.
"He survived without a scratch on him. But he is saying 'hospital, hospital'," driver Hiirayste Borow told Reuters by telephone from the scene of the crash north of Mogadishu.
Official sources and witnesses said they assumed most of the 11 must have died, but there was no independent confirmation.
Columns of smoke billowed up from the inaccessible, wooded area in the outskirts of north Mogadishu where the plane came down, said a Reuters reporter near the scene.
Government and AU sources told Reuters the plane was an Ilyushin carrying technicians who had been working on another damaged plane used by the peace mission.
AU mission spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda said 11 people were on board, believed to be from Russia or Belarus, but it was too early to tell the cause of the crash.
Insurgents believed to be a mixture of militant Islamists and disgruntled clan militia are striking daily against the government, their Ethiopian military allies, and a contingent of 1,200 Ugandan soldiers in the vanguard of the AU force.
A Somali Islamist website, qaadisiya.com, said the Ilyushin had been hit by a missile, but did not make a claim of responsibility as it has done in past attacks of recent weeks.
WORSE TO COME?
Earlier today, witnesses heard shelling and cannon fire near a former defence headquarters, the scene of repeated fighting since Wednesday.
Around 20 people have been killed and hundreds more wounded this week in the bloodiest clashes since the government and Ethiopian troops seized the city from rival Islamists three months ago after a two-week war.
Thousands of residents have fled the almost daily guerrilla attacks aimed at a government trying to restore central rule to Somalia after 16 years of lawlessness.
Residents say the latest violence coincides with a government-led disarmament drive resisted by Mogadishu's dominant Hawiye clan, many of whom regard it as an attempt by the president, from the rival Darod clan, to marginalise them.
President Abdullahi Yusuf's government says it wants to secure the gun-infested city before a reconciliation conference scheduled for April 16.
The International Committee of the Red Cross estimated 300 were injured this week and residents and officials fear the death toll will rise.
"The dead are not making it to hospitals and it is too dangerous for our staff to be out on the streets, so there is no way to know yet," said Pascal Hundt of the Red Cross.
Analysts say there may be worse violence to come with disgruntled factions likely to exploit popular anger at any forced disarmament and at foreign troops.
"This is a tragic situation," said UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia Eric Laroche.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis, Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi)
- REUTERS
