Violence in and around the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has already cost some 21,000 lives in the last three years.

With another 1.5 million Somali's homeless, the nation in the Horn of Africa is suffering one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies.

Return fire after Islamist insurgents fired mortar bombs on Mogadishu's presidential palace cost another 16 lives on Monday.

[Farhia Ali, Mogadishu Resident]: 

"I was sitting here with my uncle preparing for prayers when a mortar landed on my uncle's head and killed him. My mother and I were injured."

Rebels from the hard-line al Shabaab group, which Washington says is al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia, routinely fire at the hilltop Villa Somali palace from other parts of Mogadishu. 

Troops at the palace often launch shells back.

This time, residents said several bombs struck the city's northern livestock market in the Suqa Holaha district.

Doctors at a local hospital were busy treating injured civilians even as the number kept on going up. 

Somalia has not had an effective central government for nearly two decades, leading to the rise of warlords, heavily armed militias and pirates terrorizing shipping off its shores.

Western security agencies say that in addition the country has become a safe-haven for Islamist militants and foreign fighters who are using the country as a haven to plot attacks there and abroad.