SOMALIA:Sporadic shelling and gunfire shook Mogadishu yesterday as a massive exodus from the Somali capital gathered pace from a week of battles residents say has killed at least 30 people and probably far more.
The United Nations said 321,000 people - nearly a third of the city's population - had fled since February in refugee scenes not seen in Somalia since the fall of a dictator in 1991.
In provinces around Mogadishu, tens of thousands of refugees waited under trees or beside roads in what aid groups say is a looming humanitarian disaster.
At Mogadishu hospitals, doctors struggled to tend to scores of wounded after four days of clashes between troops and insurgents.
Soldiers blocked off roads to military bases after a suicide attacker blew himself up on Thursday at a former prison now used by the interim Somali government's Ethiopian military allies.
At least 21 people, mainly civilians, died in the explosion and other fighting in the city on Thursday. Nine also died on Tuesday and Wednesday, though locals say the real death toll - including an unknown number of fighters - must be much higher.
Residents hardened by 16 years of lawlessness say violence is getting worse in Mogadishu, where Islamist insurgents and some disgruntled Hawiye clan fighters are battling government forces and Ethiopian soldiers. African Union peacekeepers have failed to stem the violence, and have also been targeted.
Hundreds more Somalis were fleeing Mogadishu by foot, donkey, cart and vehicle yesterday, witnesses said.
President Abdullahi Yusuf tried to put a brave face on the situation. "I would say the problem of Somalia is slowly but surely ending," he said in Ethiopia where he was holding talks with prime minister Meles Zenawi.
Mogadishu residents say the latest fighting, which also saw rockets fired on a crowded market on Thursday, is as bad as four days of battles that killed 1,000 people at the end of March.
A little known Islamist group, the Young Mujahideen Movement in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the suicide blast.
The UN estimates there are 3,000 anti-government combatants, including foreign fighters, in Somalia. The security council will in June consider sending peacekeepers.
Mr Yusuf vowed to hunt down gunmen loyal to an Islamist movement defying his government's attempt to establish central rule for the first time since the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said dozens of Ethiopian soldiers had defected and fled across the sea to Yemen but Somali officials denied that.
Ethiopia dismissed comments by the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, Eric Laroche, that its troops and the Somali interim government were not helping with access for aid.
Oxfam urged Kenya to reopen its border to allow aid in and Somali asylum seekers to be screened.
In the United States, an American who travelled to Somalia to support Islamic rule there pleaded guilty to training with al-Qaeda, officials said yesterday. Daniel Joseph Maldonado was arrested in Kenya in January after fleeing Somalia. - ( Reuters)