Two Ethiopian soldiers were killed after a roadside bomb hit an Ethiopian military convoy while subsequent firing killed six civilians and wounded several other people on Monday in Wanlaweyn district, north of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, witnesses and local media reported.
"The Ethiopian troops started shooting at every direction killing six people including a child, a woman and an elderly man, after two of the Ethiopian soldiers died in the huge blast," Abdinasir Mohamed Ali, an eyewitness near the scene told Xinhua byphone.
Local media also reported the same death toll, adding that "several" other people including civilians and Ethiopian troops were also wounded in the explosion.
Reports coming from Wanlaweyn say the Ethiopian convoy was heading to the southern town of Baidoa, the seat of the transitional Somali parliament.
Baidoa, the provincial capital of south Somali region of Bay, 250 km southwest of Mogadishu, has recently been the scene of growing insurgent attacks.
No one has taken responsibility for the attack on the Ethiopian troops, who crossed into Somalia at the end of 2006 to help Somali transitional government oust an Islamist administration that controlled much of southern and central Somalia.
Islamist insurgent groups, opposed to the presence of foreign forces in Somalia, have been waging Iraqi-style guerilla attacks on Somali government forces and official and the Ethiopian troops backing them for the past 19 months.
The Somali transitional government or Ethiopian military commanders in Somalia, who do not usually speak to the media about security matters, did not comment on the latest attack.
Meanwhile in Mogadishu, Somali insurgent groups and Ethiopian troops on Monday exchanged heavy artillery and machine gunfire following insurgent attacks on an Ethiopian military base in the northeast of the Somali capital.
It is not clear if the clashes resulted in casualties on the warring sides or on civilians who bear the brunt of the near daily violence in the restive coastal city.
Thousands have either been killed or wounded in the on-going violence which forces hundreds of thousands of civilians out of their homes since February last year.
Source: Xinhua
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