52 killed in heavy fighting in Somali capital

Heavy fighting Saturday between Islamic insurgents and Ethiopian troops backing the government left at least 52 civilians dead in the capital, a human rights official said, describing the violence as the worst in years. One of the city's main hospitals pitched tents outside to care for the wounded.

Refugees fleeing the city carried cooking utensils, linens and clothes wrapped in sheets. Some looked weak and said they had not eaten for days.

The U.N. refugee agency said hundreds of thousands of Mogadishu residents had fled in recent days _ out of the city's total population of about 2 million _ and on Saturday hundreds of women, children and men joined them.

"It is better to die in a safe place hungry and thirsty than to wait for mortar shells," said a mother of eight who only gave her name as Faduma. She said that she had not eaten for two days and during March battles between the insurgents and Ethiopians, her husband and oldest daughter were killed.

On Friday, the U.N. refugee agency revised its estimate of the number of people who fled Mogadishu since February to 321,000, up from 218,000, saying the additional figures were from new information about Mogadishu residents who had fled to central Somalia towns.

Somalia's Elman Human Rights Organization said Mogadishu residents, hospital workers and human rights workers reported at least 52 civilian deaths and many wounded Saturday. Fighting from Wednesday to Friday killed at least 113, according to Elman.

"I call on the both sides to stop the fighting and shelling without any condition," to save civilian lives, Sudan Ali Ahmed, Elman's chairman, told The Associated Press, describing the violence Saturday as the worst in recent years.

Dahir Dhere, director of Medina hospital, said his hospital has more wounded patients than it can handle _ with more coming all the time. He said the hospital pitched tents outside the building to accommodate them.

On Saturday, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, said it would be wrong to characterize the recent bloodshed in Mogadishu as a full-blown Islamic insurgency.

Ranneberger, whose mandate also includes Somalia, said the violence has been unorganized and carried out by clan rivals and remnants of an ousted Islamic movement that has threatened an Iraq-style insurgency.

"They are trying to create an insurgency," Ranneberger told The Associated Press in neighboring Kenya. "But at this point it's opportunistic violence. They're not organized like an insurgency."

Somali troops backed by Ethiopian forces ousted the Council of Islamic Courts in December from Mogadishu and other strongholds. Since then the capital has seen of waves of violence. The most deadly began in late March and saw hundreds of people killed, most of them civilians.

Somalia's transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help, but has struggled to extend its control over the country.

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Associated Press Writer Elizabeth A. Kennedy contributed to this report.