Somalia:Mogadishu's war-weary people spent a fourth day under siege yesterday as mortars crashed into targets across the city even as clan elders announced a ceasefire.
Analysts said peace was unlikely after a weekend when doctors declared hospitals full.
The Ugandan army said yesterday one of its soldiers had been killed - the first African Union peacekeeper to die - during intensified fighting in the capital Mogadishu.
Civilians have been the main victims since a previous six-day ceasefire broke down on Thursday. Ethiopian and Somali government troops, backed by tanks and helicopters, are embarked on an offensive to clear Mogadishu of insurgents linked to the ousted Islamic Courts.
Abdullahi Ali Hassan, director of the Centre for Development and Education, a Somali non-governmental organisation, said the fighting was bloody even by Mogadishu's warped standards.
"It's the heaviest fighting since the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991. Today is the fourth day of mortars and shelling. There are wounded people everywhere and many deaths," he said by phone from his office in Mogadishu.
On Friday, insurgents downed an Ethiopian helicopter gunship - a vivid reminder of Mogadishu's darkest days when militias shot down two American Black Hawks in 1993.
The bodies of dead Ethiopian soldiers have also been dragged through the streets.
Doctors in the city's hospitals said at the weekend they were no longer able to cope with the numbers of wounded.
"We are operating with only half our surgeons here and the doctors who are here have now been working without relief for the last three days," Sheikhdon Salad Elmi, director of the city's main Madina Hospital, told Reuters.
Somalia has been beset by violence since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Clan-linked warlords carved the country into a series of fiefdoms making it all but impossible for any central authority to take control.
That changed last year when militias linked to a network of Islamic Courts seized control of Mogadishu and a swath of southern and central Somalia.
They were ousted at the end of December by a whirlwind Ethiopian assault.
Addis Ababa - with the tacit support of the US - feared a hard-line Islamic state would become a haven for al-Qaeda terrorists in the Horn of Africa.
Since then a weak interim Somali government has struggled to impose order on Mogadishu.
The old warlord militias have resurfaced and the remnants of the courts are waging a bitter war against Ethiopian troops, which they see as an occupying force.
Traditional elders from Mogadishu's dominant Hawiye clan - whose sub-clans were heavily represented among the Islamic courts - met yesterday before issuing calls for a ceasefire.
In a statement, they asked for their own members to lay down their arms and for Ethiopian forces to pull back, allowing residents to return to their homes.
An analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity because he works as an adviser to the Transitional Federal Government, said the ceasefire was on shaky ground.
"The Hawiye elders really have very little leverage or control over the young and the radicals who make up the Shabbab," he said.
The particularly war-like Ayr sub-clan, he added, was not present at the meetings, thus weakening the impact of any peace deal.