At least 12 people are dead and 17 wounded after fierce fighting continued in the central Somali village of Gelinsor. Friday's toll raised the number of dead to 40 after two days of fighting, village elders said. "At least 12 people were killed after heavy shelling on Friday afternoon," Ahmad Muhammad, an elder, told French news agency AFP. "The forces did not engage in direct fighting like they did on Thursday, but they occasionally fought in the area by using heavy machine guns and also there was artillery and mortar shelling," he said. "A huge number of civilians fled the area and gone to neighbouring and relatively peaceful villages," Ahmed Haji Hassan, from nearby Bandira-Ley village, told AFP by radio. On Thursday, at least 28 people were killed and 74 wounded in clashes as a result of fighting in the same village. Local residents said the clashes were linked to the early November killing of five elders from the Sulayman subclan by gunmen from the rival Sa'ad subclan.
A new Somali cabinet was announced in Nairobi earlier in the week. The new administration is designed to fill a 13-year-old power vacuum in the war-torn Horn of Africa state. Since the 1991 fall of dictator Muhammad Siad Barre, Somalia has lacked an effective central government and any form of national security forces, leaving the country's numerous clans and subclans to fight it out. More than two years of talks in Kenya between commanders, elders, civil society leaders and academics have produced many of the building blocks of what is hoped will lead to Somalia's first effective government since Barre's ouster. But all these institutions - a parliament, president, prime minister and, as of Wednesday, a cabinet - remain based in Nairobi, because Somalia's own capital, Mogadishu, is still considered too dangerous. Meanwhile talks are underway between Somaliland officials and UN undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland. Aljazeera's correspondent said talks are being held in Hargeisa and that Egeland will be assessing the situation in nearby refugee camps.