Nairobi, Mogadishu - Islamic insurgents attacked the Somali president's convoy as he prepared to fly out to Ethiopia for crisis talks aimed at healing a rift with the prime minister, reports said Friday.

The BBC reported that insurgents detonated two landmines near President Abdullahi Yusuf's convoy as he travelled to the airport in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Ethiopian troops opened fire after the attack and killed five civilians, the BBC said.

Mogadishu - Six civilians died and four were wounded when Ethiopian troops opened fired on a minibus just south of the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses said Thursday.

A witness told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the Ethiopians "opened fire indiscriminately" shortly after a gun battle between Islamic insurgents and Ethiopian soldiers protecting a convoy.

Yusuf Haji, a resident in the town of Walaweyn, told dpa that the minibus was attacked late on Wednesday evening as it passed through an area near the scene of an earlier gunfight.

Mogadishu - Three people died Wednesday after a small aircraft carrying khat, a narcotic leaf, crashed as it tried to land at an airport near the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Mogadishu - Clashes between Islamic rebels and government soldiers in the north of the Somali capital Mogadishu left a number of people dead including five children between the ages of 6 and 13, it was reported Monday.

The children, pupils at a Koran school, were reported by witnesses to have been trying to flee as rebels attacked an Ethiopian military base on Sunday evening.

In another incident, two youths were killed when a grenade exploded on a football field where the teenagers were playing.

Mogadishu - Aid agencies are considering suspending operations in conflict-stricken Somalia as deadly attacks against humanitarian workers ramp up, reports said Monday.

Mogadishu - Somali insurgents said Thursday they had attacked one of the transitional government's main military camps 25 kilometres east of Baidoa, the seat of the Horn of Africa nation's parliame