Somalia Conflict Toll Put at 14,000 : Africa: The estimate by two human rights groups is nearly triple any previous count in the bitter civil war.

Two international human rights groups estimated Wednesday that factional fighting around Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has killed 14,000 Somalis since last November, a figure nearly three times any previous estimate of the death toll.

The report, jointly issued by Africa Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, both headquartered in the United States, also estimated the number of wounded in and around the stricken capital at 27,000.

The most recent previous estimate of casualties in Mogadishu, made earlier this year by the International Committee of the Red Cross, had placed the total killed and wounded at about 30,000 since fighting intensified last fall.

The committee did not break down the figures, but other relief organizations with representatives in the city had estimated the number of deaths at 5,000, most of them the victims of gun and artillery fire and the near total absence of medical facilities in the area.

The two human rights groups said their estimates were based on interviews with a wide range of survivors and medical personnel in Mogadishu by investigators on two missions last month.

The report underscores the inability of the outside world to come to grips with the Somali disaster. A team of U.N. officials is currently at the midpoint of a weeklong mission to Mogadishu and the provincial centers of Berbera and Kismayu. But many observers argue that the U.N. efforts to establish peace have fallen far short of its program in Yugoslavia, another center of factional strife.

“The U.N. effort won’t bear fruit politically until the U.N. appoints a high-level representative” of the caliber of Cyrus R. Vance, the former U.S. secretary of state and U.N. Security Council envoy to Yugoslavia, said Rakiya Omaar, a Somali who is executive director of New York-based Africa Watch.

Somalia drifted into chaos after its long-term dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, fled the capital in January, 1991. By that time, guerrilla forces representing many of the ethnic clans opposing Siad Barre’s regime were in control of the countryside outside the capital.

Since his departure, Mogadishu has been contested by armed forces headed by Ali Mahdi Mohamed, who was elected Somalia’s president by a rebel conference in 1991, and Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, whose forces drove Siad Barre out of the city. Until recently, Aidid had refused to negotiate with Mahdi or independent mediators and has been largely blamed for the failure of previous truce efforts.

Omaar and others argue that those efforts have been hampered by the failure of the United Nations and such regional bodies as the Arab League and the Organization of African Unity to take a firm stand on ending the slaughter.

During deliberations this month, for example, the U.N. Security Council rejected--reportedly at the urging of the United States--a resolution calling for the United Nations to establish a plan for active monitoring of a cease-fire in Mogadishu. The final resolution adopted March 17 omitted any reference to a cease-fire and empowered the U.N. mission now in the country only to focus on humanitarian assistance.

Observers argue that delivering food and medical supplies to the 1.5 million Somalis facing starvation in and around Mogadishu is virtually impossible as long as open disorder reigns in the city.