Shells rocked Mogadishu through the night and into Saturday morning, killing more civilians and sending hundreds more fleeing the Somali capital in the biggest mass exodus since the 1991 fall of a dictator.
”There are a lot of deaths. I am carrying the bodies of two family members into my car now,” one distraught resident, who asked not to give his name, told Reuters.
Battles since Wednesday pitting Somali and Ethiopian troops against Islamist insurgents have killed at least 131 people, a local rights group said late on Friday.
But with more deaths overnight, the toll was sure to rise.
A similar four-day flare-up in March killed 1 000 people.
The United Nations says 321 000 residents — or nearly a third of Mogadishu’s estimated one million population — have fled since February in what it and aid agencies are calling a looming humanitarian catastrophe.
Many refugees are living under trees and beside roads.
In Mogadishu, residents described a terrifying night of near-constant shelling mixed with thunder from a storm.
”At one point you couldn’t tell the difference. My windows were shaking,” a Reuters witness said, half a dozen shells exploding within earshot as he spoke briefly by telephone to his head office in Nairobi.
Warlords kicked out Somalia’s former military ruler Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, ushering in 16 years of anarchy in the Horn of Africa nation. — Reuters