MOGADISHU, Sept 27: Islamists fired mortars at Mogadishu airport on Saturday and government troops fired back, leaving nine people dead in the clash, an airport worker and residents said.

Mohamed Aden, a worker at the airport, told Reuters the Islamists fired the mortars shortly after a military plane carrying equipment for the African Union troops had landed.

Government and Ethiopian troops at the nearby presidential palace responded by shooting in the direction from where the mortars were coming, hitting residential areas.

Residents said nine people were killed and 10 injured.

“A mortar killed six civilians in Bakara market,” resident Ismail Salad told Reuters.

Three men killed and six injured after mortars landed in Bermida village, another witness said.

The plane was not damaged and later took off, witnesses said.

The conflict in strategically sensitive Somalia, which looks across the Gulf of Aden to the Middle East, has compounded tensions in the always volatile Horn of Africa region.

According to the United Nations about 12,000 people have left Mogadishu to escape the fighting in the past few days alone.

There are already 1 million internal refugees in Somalia, which has not had a central government since 1991.—Reuters