| Heavily armed Somali rebels killed seven government troops and wounded eight others after briefly occupying a southern town on Sunday. Since being ejected from Mogadishu at the end of 2006 after a brief, six-month rule of south Somalia, the rebels have waged a bloody insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian military backers. “At least seven soldiers have been killed and eight others have been wounded in the gunfight between the troops and the insurgents,” said Hussein Ali Isaq, a senior police officer in Dinsoor. “I was one of the police officers who escaped when the Islamic Court’s fighters seized the town. They left a few hours after they burned three battlewagons and ... confiscated all the weapons in the town,” he told Reuters by telephone. |