Eight people were killed and ten others were wounded in a heavy fighting broke out between insurgent groups and Ethiopian and Somali transitional government troops in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Thursday as Ethiopian soldiers tried to take new positions in the north of the city, witnesses said.

"Eight people, including children trying to flee the fighting area, were killed by a stray shell that hit the vehicle they were travelling in," Barre Omar, an eyewitness who saw the victims, told Xinhua. "Ten others were wounded by shrapnel."

Abdulahi Sheikh Hassan, a Hawiye clan leader, told reporters that the Ethiopian troops have breached the ceasefire agreement and are refusing to abide by it.

The sound of heavy artilery and machine gunfire could be heard throughout the Somali capital. An upsurge of voilence blamed on remnants of the defeated Islamists have been raging in Mogadishu, where a national reconciliation congress, earlier planned for April 16, is rescheduled to be held in mid June.

The Somali transitional government was formed in 2004 in Nairobi after protracted peacetalks that lasted for two year.

Source: Xinhua