At least 42 civilians were killed on Sunday as clashes between Ethiopian forces and Islamist insurgents in the Somali capital raged for a fifth straight day.
As rival forces exchanged artillery after a night of sporadic battles, demolishing buildings in northern and southern Mogadishu, scores of corpses lay abandoned in the streets as shooting barred residents from collecting them.
Hundreds of terrified civilians continued to stream out of the city. The latest deaths brought the death toll from the past five days to 210, Sudan Ali Ahmed, head of the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation that tracks casualty figures, told AFP. Sixty-two injured civilians were taken to hospital.
Residents said the toll could be much higher as many battlefields were still inaccessible and the wounded were crowded in the capital's hospitals, with many lying on corridors and outside.
"Bodies are lying rotting in areas we cannot access," Ahmed said, citing his teams on the ground. "We are appealing to both sides to stop the fighting. This is unacceptable the civilians are bearing the brunt."
Residents said the clashes were continuing unabated. "We can see Ethiopian tanks firing artillery and mortar shells towards civilian areas. They are firing indiscriminately and the mortars are landing everywhere," said Abdulkarim Ali, a resident of southern Mogadishu's Gupta area.
"The fighting is going on heavily in this area. Both sides are using machine guns and anti-aircraft guns and many people are trapped in their houses," said Mukhtar Mohamed, a resident of Fagah in northern Mogadishu.
"May Allah save us because He is the only one who knows when this fighting will end," he said, adding that casualties were "apparently increasing in this neighbourhood and people are fleeing."
Four days of fighting earlier this month claimed at least 1,000 lives in clashes that were described as the worst bloodletting since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The UN says at least 321,000 people have fled Mogadishu since February. Many are camped under trees and makeshift hovels in the city's outskirts, without supplies and where disease outbreaks have been reported.
Prospects for a ceasefire were shattered last week after the Ethiopian forces refused to meet elders from Mogadishu's dominant Hawiye clan until commanders of the insurgency attend.
But the elders blamed the Ethiopians of planning to fight until they wipe out the insurgency and create a secure environment for the embattled government. Ethiopian-backed President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has said the insurgents are being backed by al Qaeda.
Ethiopian troops helped Somalia's UN-backed transitional government to oust Islamists from Mogadishu in January. But since then fighting has steadily grown worse as insurgents and clan warlords have waged a guerrilla war.
Some 1,500 AU peacekeepers from Uganda, who have deployed in the seaside capital since early March, have been unable to stem the escalating violence. The Ugandans are an advance contingent of about 8,000 peacekeepers the AU plans to deploy in Somalia.
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