Fighting raged for a third day in the Somali capital today as government troops and their Ethiopian allies continued a major offensive to quash a growing insurgency by Islamic militants.
Artillery fire and mortar shells rained down on the capital, sending residents fleeing some of the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu since the early 1990s.
On Friday, insurgents shot an Ethiopian helicopter gunship out of the sky and mortar shells slammed into a hospital, leaving corpses piled in the streets and wounding hundreds of civilians.
According to an official count, 30 people have been killed since the offensive started on Thursday. But the fighting was so severe and widespread in Mogadishu that bodies were not being picked up or even tallied, and residents said hundreds more were believed dead across the city of 1 million people.
Somali presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamoud Hussein blamed the violence on foreign terrorists, saying al-Qaeda has sent fighters here to battle government and allied troops.
"These elements were behind the downing of the helicopter yesterday," he said.
The insurgents are linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, which was driven from power in December by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers, accompanied by US special forces.
Insurgents were firing mortars from residential areas of the city, and Ethiopian troops responded with barrages of heavy artillery. The attacks occurred across the flat seaside capital, and huge plumes of smoke rose into the air.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said dozens of people have been killed since Thursday and more than 220 wounded, most of them civilians with bullet, grenade and other shrapnel wounds.
"The population of Mogadishu is caught up in the worst fighting in more than 15 years," the agency said.
The UN's refugee agency said 58,000 people have fled violence in the Somali capital since the beginning of February.
AP