Heavy fighting broke out in the Somali capital on Wednesday as government forces intensified their offensive to drive out insurgents, officials said.

Heavy fighting erupted on Tuesday in a previously quiet part of the Somali capital sending hundreds of residents fleeing, officials said.

Fierce battles in Mogadishu forced about 8 000 people to flee the Somali capital in one day, the United Nations said on Sunday.

Hardline Islamist insurgents in Somalia’s capital fired mortar bombs at the presidential palace and attacked AU peacekeepers on Saturday evening.

Islamist insurgents closed in on Somalia’s coastal capital after seizing another strategic town north of Mogadishu on Monday.

Nigeria’s main militant group on Monday accused the government of indiscriminately bombing villages as a flare-up in fighting continued.

The UN envoy for Somalia blamed Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys on Wednesday for recent fighting in Mogadishu.

Clashes between rival groups in southern Sudan in which at least 66 people have died are cause for ”serious concern,” a UN official said on Wednesday.

A human rights activist says hundreds are fleeing Somalia’s capital after weekend fighting left at least 35 dead.

Rebels have killed 567 people and displaced 115 000 in northeast DRC’s Oriental province since September, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.

There are growing fears in the DRC that the Nord-Kivu conflict could escalate, with the potential to bring violence to far-removed capital Kinshasa.

Fresh fighting broke out Monday between the army and rebel militia in the east of the DRC, with government forces claiming to have killed 20 rebels.