Somalia:Almost 90,000 people have fled Mogadishu in four days of the worst fighting the Somali capital has seen in months, according to United Nations officials.
Aid agencies are warning that escalating insecurity threatens a "humanitarian catastrophe" as they struggle to reach a total of 800,000 people made homeless.
In the past two days the capital has seen a reduction in fighting between Ethiopian troops and insurgents, but residents said that they feared fresh outbreaks.
"You can feel tension in the air," a Somali aid worker told the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR.
"Everyone is afraid that the lull in fighting is not going to last. They fear the insurgents are organising themselves and that violence is going to be unleashed on an even higher scale."
Mogadishu has seen more than a decade of fighting. The latest round intensified last Friday, when Ethiopian forces began an operation to flush out opposition.
Christian Balslev-Olesen, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, said that 100 people had been injured at the weekend, adding to an estimated 3,400 war-wounded civilians since January.
Insecurity, checkpoints and "ad hoc taxation" were hampering aid flows, he added. "Entire districts have been emptied of inhabitants, forcing people from their homes with little or no supplies for daily survival. Indiscriminate use of force by all parties, reports of house-to-house searches and large-scale detentions have created a climate of fear among the population not witnessed before."
Many of the people fleeing headed for the town of Afgooye, west of the capital, where some 100,000 have already settled after previous clashes.
"Entire families are now crammed in tiny huts," a UNHCR staff member reported from Afgooye. "Those who arrived this weekend were hoping to go back to the capital in a matter of days, but now they see their relatives, who have been here for months, they lose hope."
With foreign correspondents largely staying out of Somalia for security reasons and the international agenda being dominated by other hotspots, including Darfur, aid workers say that the Somali crisis is not getting the attention it deserves.
The US navy continues to track two ships attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia.
On Sunday, the USS Porter fired on two pirate vessels tied to the Japanese-registered Golden Nori, destroying both. US troops also boarded a North Korean ship after its crew successfully regained control from pirates. Three crew members were wounded and were treated by American medics.