MOGADISHU (AFP) -- At least seven people were killed and several others wounded overnight when gunmen fired mortar shells in at least three neighborhoods in the volatile Somali capital, Mogadishu, residents said on Friday.

The attacks on Thursday night were blamed on an armed group calling itself the Resistance Forces of Islam in Somalia. The gunmen were targeting camps housing Ethiopian troops, who had helped the weak interim government drive an Islamist movement out of Mogadishu last month, the residents said.

Four people, including a woman and two children, were killed in Mogadishu's southern Barakat district and at least one in a nearby neighborhood, while three others died in Sisi district in the north, they said.

"Four people were killed and seven were wounded in Barakat," local resident Abdullahi Moalim Daud told AFP.

"The woman and the two children were hit by stray mortar which destroyed their house," said Amina Asheyr, a relative of the deceased.

She added that at least six people had been taken to hospital with injuries and others had been treated at local pharmacies for minor wounds.

Mogadishu has seen a surge in violence since the arrival in the capital of the government forces and their Ethiopian backers. Residents have protested at the presence of the Ethiopian troops, some of whom began withdrawing last week.

The Resistance Forces of Islam in Somalia have been distributing leaflets in Mogadishu calling for resistance against the interim government and has posted messages on its website vowing to fight the African Union peacekeepers that are expected to deploy in the war-torn nation.

Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle said he regretted the violence and promised the government would restore peace in the volatile capital within weeks. "The terrible mess will be short-lived," Jelle told AFP. "The government has the capacity and the capability to destroy them and it is a matter of days or weeks before security is restored in Mogadishu."