At least 18 people have been killed and 60 injured in the Somali capital Mogadishu in an exchange of artillery and mortar fire. The violence began when Islamist insurgents fired mortars at the airport as President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was boarding a plane. The Somali president was flying to Uganda for an African Union summit on refugees.

Government troops and African Union peacekeepers responded by firing shells at Mogadishu's main market and residential areas, which are controlled by insurgents. An ambulance worker told the BBC that most of those killed were civilians.

There had been a lull in fighting in the capital since the start of October when fighting broke out between Somalia's two main fundamentalist Islamist rebel groups, Hizbul Islam and Al Shabaab, in the southern port of Kismayu and surrounding districts. The two groups, which have been allies in fighting the Somali government and African Union forces, control much of the centre and south of the country.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed
Photo by Wikimedia Commons