MOGADISHU, June 11 (Reuters) - Somali insurgents killed five officers and one civilian in an attack on a Mogadishu police base, witnesses said, hours after rejecting a U.N.-brokered peace deal for the Horn of Africa nation. That attack, and two other insurgent killings in Baidoa and Mogadishu, brought to about 40 the number killed in an increase in fighting since the weekend between allied Ethiopian-Somali security forces and Islamist-led insurgents. Witnesses said five bodies lay in the street after insurgents opened fire on Tuesday night at a police base -- a typical attack in an Iraq-style campaign of hit-and-run raids, bombs and assassinations. Police confirmed the other fatality in that incident. The attack came after Islamist hardliners Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheik Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki -- who are both on U.S. and U.N. lists of al Qaeda associates -- rejected a peace deal signed in Djibouti. Under U.N. mediation, the pact was agreed by representatives of Somalia's government and some members of the exiled opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) late on Monday. But with militant ARS members, and insurgents on the ground, scoffing at the deal, analysts say it will have negligible impact on the fighting on the ground. Aweys and Turki both encouraged insurgents to keep attacking the government and its Ethiopian military allies. Insurgents also killed a policeman and a taxi-driver in the provincial town of Baidoa, where Somalia's parliament sits, on Tuesday night. "They came from an alley and fired at the taxi," said witness Hawa Farah. And in Mogadishu, suspected insurgents shot dead a tax-collector on Tuesday night, residents said. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Ibrahim Mohamed; Writing by Aweys Yusuf; Editing by Elizabeth Piper) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/) (nairobi.newsroom@reuters.com, +254 20 2224717)
Somali immigrants displaced by anti-foreigner violence in Cape Town wait at a refugee centre camp near the city, May 26, 2008. South Africa said on Monday violent attacks on immigrants which ...
