Shells rocked Mogadishu through the night and into yesterday morning, killing more civilians and sending hundreds more fleeing the Somali capital in the biggest exodus from the city 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," said one distraught resident, who asked not to give his name.
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 flareup last month killed 1,000 people.
The UN says 321,000 residents -- or nearly a third of Mogadishu's estimated 1 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.
"Unless something is done, the humanitarian crisis is going to turn into a catastrophe very soon," Eric Laroche, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Somalia, said on Thursday.
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 correspondent 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.
At least six civilians were killed and several wounded in the battles bringing this week's death toll to 43.
"I can tell you that more than 30 people have been killed in two days of fighting. The number of wounded people is about 200," said Hussein Said Korgab, the spokesman for the Hawiye clan.
The UN said Somali government forces were blocking relief supplies and that UN aircraft were being shot at.
In Mogadishu, bodies were left in the streets and a cholera or diarrhea epidemic was taking hold.
More Ethiopian troops moved into Mogadishu to reinforce their colleagues a day after a suspected suicide bomber attacked their base south of the capital.
Tensions in Somalia have risen again since Ethiopian forces helped the UN-backed transitional government to oust Islamists from Mogadishu in January.
The Islamists have vowed to wage a prolonged guerrilla war against the Ethiopians and the capital is in the grips of fierce fighting, touching off an exodus of civilians.
The Hawiye clan elders have accused the Ethiopians of refusing to withdraw from the frontline, attacking the insurgents and shattering a fragile ceasefire.
But an official close to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's office told AFP the two sides were "still in secret, intermittent talks."
In Addis Ababa, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said the government was determined to wipe out the insurgents in the capital.
"And unless we do action, Mogadishu will never be safe for anyone -- the public or the government -- and that is why we are fighting," Yusuf said.
Meanwhile, the African Union (AU) envoy to Somalia Mohamed Foum held talks with Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi in Mogadishu on the deployment of more AU peacekeepers in the lawless country.
Some 1,500 AU peacekeepers from Uganda deployed in the lawless capital early last month have failed to stem the surge in violence. They have instead taken positions in the main airport, sea port, presidential palace and a key access road to the airport.
The Ugandans are an advance contingent of about 8,000 peacekeepers the pan-African body plans to deploy in Somalia.
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