The port town of Marka, provincial capital of Lower Shabelle, was relatively quiet all day Tuesday as people largely stayed inside their homes for fear of more armed clashes. Last night's attack erupted around 1am local time at the town's southern checkpoint where police defended themselves from the militiamen. Five others, including police officers, were wounded in the gun fight. In fighting in Mogadishu a policeman and an insurgent were killed. An explosion in Bakaar marketplace killed three civilians and an Ethiopian soldier was killed while on patrol. Insurgents attacked a Somali Army General in south Mogadishu and successfully assassinated him, a bodyguard and their military driver. A Somali security official was killed in Mogadishu, witnesses said Sunday, as Islamists insurgents brought into their ranks a battle-tested Afghan-trained commander. Gunmen shot dead Ahmed Hareed, a district official for Somali National Security Agency, overnight in the south of the lawless capital, the latest in a string of attacks targeting government employees and sympathisers. A suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint in Baidoa killing 3 Ethiopian soldiers. A nighttime mortar exchange in Mogadishu killed three people hiding in a restaurant and sent seven other civilians to hospital. Somali soldiers exchanged gunfire with TFG militiamen in Kismayo over an illegal checkpoint resulting in the death of 1 soldier, wounding of two civilians and the arrest of one gunman. Somalia’s Northern regions, which until recently enjoyed a relative peace, are on the verge of entering an era of internecine clan warfare similar to, and may be worse than, what has plagued the southern part of the country  for over a decade. The Hargeisa-based clan-driven secessionists’ northern enclave of Somaliland, in the early hours of October 15, 2007, launched unprovoked armed aggression on the peaceful town of Las Anod, the capital of Sool region in the northern pro-unity State of Puntland. This naked aggression caused the death of at least 12 people and displacement of large residents of the city, as well as injuring unknown number of civilians. The local people are in arms defending their families and their properties against these invaders from their distant stronghold, Hargeisa, which is more than 900 Kilometers from Las Anod. A police sub-commander and two bodyguards were assassinated in Mogadishu and a civilian was killed in a grenade attack. In Bossasso after a day-long stand-off gunfire erupted killing two suspected Islamic insurgents in Puntland and injuring four police officers, resulting in one of them dying in hospital.  17 civilians are killed in heavy fighting in Mogadishu.