Corpses lay on Mogadishu streets this evening as Ethiopian forces backed by tanks and artillery fought Islamist-led insurgents in a new round of fighting that has killed more than 40 people in two days.
Residents said the death toll included eight civilians who died today when an Ethiopian mortar bomb
A boy looks at the body of a dead civilian in southern Mogadishu today.
blew up in the sprawling Bakara Market, littering the area with body parts.
Twelve more bodies, including two women, lay in an insurgent stronghold in the north of the city - a district where rebels dragged dead Ethiopian soldiers along the roads yesterday.
"Some of the dead civilians were identified by relatives," Mohammed Abdullahi, a resident of the Sqa Holaha neighbourhood, said by telephone. "Some are still lying here."
In a move likely to dismay the interim government as it and its Ethiopian allies battle the rebels, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said sending UN peacekeepers to Somalia was neither realistic nor viable.
Insecurity had prevented the world body from even sending a technical assessment team, he said.
The Somali administration has long called for UN troops to help it stamp its authority on the Horn of Africa country. It is the 14th attempt to forge central rule in Somalia, which has been in chaos since 1991 when warlords ousted a dictator.
With Ethiopian support, the government chased hardline Islamists out of the capital at the start of this year, but has since faced an Iraq-style rebellion.
In the latest fighting, Ethiopian infantry and tanks pounded insurgent positions in the city, while the rebels responded with automatic gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Shabelle, an independent local broadcaster, quoted residents accusing the Ethiopians of indiscriminately shelling some of the city's most densely populated areas. It said at least 43 bodies were found today in areas that were hit hard.
The United Nations said today 114,000 more Somalis had been displaced by fighting in the last week, bringing to 850,000 the number of internal refugees across the nation.