15 Killed as Rebels Attack Somali Parliament

UN: 20K more peacekeepers needed
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 17, 2010 1:21 AM CDT
15 Killed as Rebels Attack Somali Parliament
Somalis carry a man wounded by mortar shrapnel to a waiting ambulance in Mogadishu.   (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

Three government soldiers were killed and a lawmaker was injured when mortar rounds believed to have been fired by Islamic insurgents hit Somalia's parliament building yesterday. Government and African Union soldiers counter attacked and killed close to a dozen people in a mortar assault on a market, AP reports. Dozens of civilians were injured.

The 6,000-strong peacekeeping force in the country will need up to 14,000 more troops to support Somalia's fragile transitional government, according to the UN's top envoy there. "Experience in Somalia has shown that the more delayed or inadequate the response is, the more complex the crisis becomes," he told the Security Council. For more coverage of Somalia's troubles, click here.
(More Somalia stories.)

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