113 killed as battles spread in Mogadishu

An exodus from the Somalian capital gained momentum Friday as a rights group said three days of fighting had killed at least 113 people.

Hundreds of Somalis were fleeing by foot, donkey, cart and vehicle, witnesses said. The United Nations said that 321,000 people, nearly one-third of Mogadishu’s population, had fled since February in refugee movements the country had not seen since the fall of a dictator in 1991.

Since Wednesday, battles pitting Ethiopian and Somalian troops against Islamist insurgents have killed 113 people and wounded 222, the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization said Friday.

“Today was one of the worst days of shelling yet.... We call on both sides to cease the war immediately,” group Chairman Sudan Ali Ahmed said.

Parts of Mogadishu looked like a ghost town of shattered buildings. In the provinces surrounding the city, tens of thousands of refugees waited under trees or beside roads.

At packed hospitals in the capital, bloodied patients screamed and doctors struggled to tend scores of wounded.

Soldiers blocked the roads leading to military bases after a suicide attacker blew himself up Thursday at a former prison that is used by the interim Somalian government’s Ethiopian military allies.

Several dozen people, mainly civilians, died in that blast and other fighting across the city Thursday, including a rocket attack on a marketplace.

President Abdullahi Yusuf tried to put a brave face on the situation.

“I would say the problem of Somalia is slowly but surely ending,” he said in Ethiopia, where he was holding talks with his main ally, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Yusuf vowed to hunt down gunmen loyal to an Islamist movement defying his government’s bid to restore central rule for the first time in 16 years.