Hundreds dead as Mogadishu war escalates*

By Sahal Abdulle
Reuters
Saturday, April 21, 2007; 11:06 AM

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Shells pounded Mogadishu on Saturday, killing at
least 73 people to swell a death-toll already in the hundreds from this
week's battles pitting militias and Islamists against Somali and
Ethiopian troops.

The escalating war has also sent more than 321,000 residents fleeing in
the biggest refugee movement in Somalia since the 1991 fall of a
dictator ushered in 16 years of anarchy.

Even by Somali standards, Saturday's carnage was shocking.

"I counted 20 dead in the street and the sidewalk. Some were missing
heads, others were so mutilated you couldn't tell if they were men or
women," resident Suleman Mohammed said from the Al Barakah market area
where more than seven mortars landed.

Residents and medical staff interviewed by Reuters confirmed a minimum
of 73 casualties from the incessant shelling and gunfire across the city
on Saturday, adding to an estimated 131 others from the previous three
days' violence.

The week's final death-toll is expected to soar and may come close to
the estimated 1,000 casualties from a similar four-day flare-up at the
end of March. Most of the victims are civilians.

The Islamists ruled most of south Somalia for the second half of 2006,
before being defeated in a brief war over the New Year. But their
fighters -- backed by some disgruntled Hawiye clan elements -- have
regrouped to rise up against President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration
and his Ethiopian backers.

"There are a lot of deaths. I am carrying the bodies of two family
members into my car now," one distraught resident, who asked not to give
his name, told Reuters.

Another, Abdi Mohammed, said: "Six shells hit our neighborhood. One hit
our neighbor's house killing five of the six family members who live
there. My 7-year-old son and his friend were wounded."

REFUGEE CATASTROPHE

The United Nations and aid agencies say the massive refugee exodus is
creating a looming humanitarian catastrophe, with diseases already
spreading. Many refugees are living under trees and beside roads, short
of food, water and any basic amenities.

Inside the city, residents described a terrifying night of near-constant
shelling mixed with thunder from a storm. This correspondent could
barely tell the difference as windows shook.

Mortars, apparently from Ethiopian positions, hit the offices of the
private broadcaster HornAfrik on Saturday morning, wounding several
journalists inside, witnesses said.

"We are in a state of shock, I see no end to this," said Ali Haji, 50, a
resident who took his family out of Mogadishu last month but came back
to protect his house and belongings.

"I've had enough. I'm abandoning the house. I am caught between two
groups -- Ethiopians trying to kill me because I am Somali, and
insurgents not happy because I am not picking up a gun and fighting with
them. I have lost all hope."

With even a cemetery under bombardment on Saturday, residents buried
their dead in makeshift graves.

The only operating hospital, Madina, was packed with wounded, screams
echoing through the corridors. Tents were set up in the hospital garden
to deal with the influx, with many people nursing injuries unattended
under trees in the heat.

"Unless we get massive international help, we cannot cope," a doctor
said. "Our beds and tents are full."

Access to the hospital involved a dangerous journey through streets
ricocheting to gunfire and explosions, witnesses said.

Insurgents barricaded themselves behind makeshift sandbanks and raced
through streets on the backs of pickups turned into battle-wagons, while
Ethiopian and Somali troops made forays into rebel strongholds with
armored cars.

A small African Union peacekeeping force of 1,500 Ugandan soldiers has
failed to stem the conflict.

The United States, Ethiopia and Somali government say the rebels are
linked to al Qaeda, but Islamist leaders deny that, saying they are
being deprived of a say in Somalia's future.

With the world startlingly quiet on the Somali crisis, beyond general
appeals for calm, the Arab League followed the United Nations on
Saturday to appeal for an end to violence.

"The League calls on all sides in Somalia to stop shooting, and to spare
the Somali people, especially civilians, from the perils of the current
war," Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told reporters in Cairo.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi, Cynthia Johnston
in Cairo)