MOGADISHU: Somali insurgents fired mortars at the presidential palace in the capital, killing seven civilians and two government soldiers, witnesses and officials said Wednesday.Military spokesman Farhan Casoye said the insurgents were aiming for the palace but hit a residential area Tuesday night _ the latest bloodshed in a surge of violence this month that has killed nearly 200 people. Insurgents are trying to topple the country's Western-backed government and install a strict Islamic state. `The mortars rained down on our home, I ran with my children for cover and on my way I saw the dead bodies of two government soldiers in uniform, they were hit by a mortar,'' Sahra Abdullahi Gedi, a mother of six The military spokesman said seven civilians were killed.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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