Somalia attacks make mosque, market 'human butcher houses'

MOGADISHU, Somalia (CNN) -- Heavy shelling struck Somalia's capital city on Thursday, leaving pools of blood around a neighborhood mosque, a devastated market and 11 civilians dead, according to witnesses and a local journalist.

"Bakaraha market has turned into a human butcher house today," said Hawa Hamud Abdi, a meat trader who survived the attack. She said a mother and child were among those killed. She spoke as mortar shells and artillery fire rained down on the market.

Clashes between Islamic insurgents and Somali and Ethiopian soldiers also raged around Suuqa Holaha, a neighborhood in northeast Mogadishu. Fighting also continued in Folarensa junction, an intersection near the presidential palace.

Wounded civilians are pouring into Mogadishu's Madina Hospital, which is already struggling to cope with other war-wounded patients, a nurse said.

The latest fighting comes after a major United Nations-brokered peace deal was signed in the neighboring country of Djibouti by Somalia's transitional government and an alliance of armed opposition forces.