Fifth day of fighting rocks Somali capital

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Rotting corpses lay in the open and explosions shook Mogadishu yesterday for a fifth day of fighting between insurgents and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops that has killed at least 230 people.

In an ever-growing exodus some say is nearing half a million people, hundreds of Somalis trudged out of Mogadishu yesterday, dragging and carrying belongings on their head.

"I have lost all hope," one woman said, walking at the head of 11 relatives, mainly children.

Terrified residents shuddered at the sound of mortars, mainly from the north where fighting has been the worst.

"Seven of us were in a bus when a mortar hit," said Barlin Salad. "Four were in the back, one died instantly. I'm not sure yet, but I think my husband has lost an eye."

With an insurgency simmering since the ouster of militant Islamist rulers from Mogadishu at the start of the year, the recent violence has been one of the worst sustained flare-ups since.

The local Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization said at least 41 civilians and six insurgents died yesterday, adding to 52 on Saturday and 131 from Wednesday to Friday.

Residents fear the toll may be much higher, while the number of Ethiopian and Somali soldiers killed is unknown.

A previous four-day spike in fighting at the end of March killed at least 1,000 people, most of them civilians.

Around Mogadishu, rebels were barricaded behind makeshift sandbanks and raced through streets on pickup trucks turned into battle wagons. Ethiopian and Somali government troops fired heavy artillery and raided rebel strongholds in armored cars.

Bodies lay on the streets yesterday , some mutilated and decapitated by incessant shelling that has pulverized residential neighborhoods considered Islamist strongholds.

The main Medina hospital was so full the wounded were forced into tents in the garden or just under trees.

With Somalis keen to bury their dead quickly in accord with Muslim custom, some were digging makeshift graves by the road.

The Islamists ruled most of south Somalia for the second half of 2006, before being defeated by the interim government and its Ethiopian military backers in a war near the start of the year.

But Islamist fighters -- backed by some disgruntled Hawiye clan elements and foreign jihadists -- have regrouped to rise up against President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration and his Ethiopian backers whom they regard as hated foreign invaders.

The government, in turn, accuses them of Al Qaeda links.

"The terrorists want to make Somalia a base to attack east African and other international targets," deputy defense minister Salad Ali Jelle said at a press conference to display two truckloads of land mines collected in two parts of the city. "The international community should help us eliminate them."