MOGADISHU, Sept 17: Five people have been killed in the latest violence in Somalia, including three in clashes between rival sub-clans south of Mogadishu, witnesses said.Militiamen from rival sub-clans of the larger Habel-Gedir clan clashed in Merka port, about 100 kilometres south of the capital, killing three.

“The fighting has intensified and spread around several villages in the region. So far, three people have been killed and six others wounded,” said Merka resident Mohamed Haji Lunge.

Elder Haji Hussein Adan confirmed the casualties and said the skirmishes were sparked by Sunday’s killing of Merka deputy police commander Muhamud Salat Sanjaebil, who belongs to one of the sub-clans.

Two others were killed in renewed overnight clashes between Somaliland and Puntland, two regions in northern Somalia which have been at loggerheads over the precise path of their frontier.

The violence broke out overnight in Sool region, about 900 kilometres northwest of Mogadishu, with both sides exchanging heavy artillery fire.

The clashes pitted government troops from Somaliland, which considers itself an independent state, against fighters loyal to the regional government in neighbouring Puntland.

“So far two people have been killed and there is sporadic artillery exchanges between the two forces,” a Puntland local authority official told AFP from the port town of Bosaso. There were reports of injuries.

“It started last night and resumed this morning and there is still sporadic artillery fire in the area,” Abdurasak Hassan Ibrahim, a resident of the nearby Luq-qorow village, told AFP by satellite phone.

Dharkanley district commissioner Moalim Abdullahi narrowly escaped a roadside explosion in southern Mogadishu, the latest in a string of attacks against government officials, he said.

“We have been escaped unhurt from the explosion that targeted me and my guards,” Abduillahi said.

In port town of Kismayo, meanwhile, 500 kilometres south of Mogadishu, authorities executed a man convicted of killing a businessman from the same clan, an elder told AFP.

Years of political turmoil exploded into a drive that ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, touching off a deadly power struggle that has defied numerous efforts to end.

The Ethiopian-backed government is currently battling an insurgency in Mogadishu that it blames on an Islamist movement that was expelled from the country’s south and central regions early this year.

Joint Ethiopia and Somali forces and some 1,500 African Union peacekeepers from Uganda have failed to stem the insurgency that has paralysed the government’s bid expand its tenuous grip beyond a few pockets in southern Somalia.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders urged the Somali government to release Mohamed Hussein Jimaale, a Mogadishu-based correspondent news website Puntlandpost, who has been in police custody since Sept 12.—AFP