Death toll in Somalia clashes crosses 80

A day after heavy shelling and gunfire claimed over 50 lives, residents said new bodies were discovered on Saturday morning in southern Mogadishu, where Ethiopian troops backing the shaky Somali government have been fighting Islamic insurgents for two days.

“A pregnant woman and an old man were included in the dead and some of them were fresh and seemed to have been killed last night,” said resident Ali Shakur Mohamed. “The scene was horrific.”

The fighting is some of the heaviest the war-ravaged city has seen since April. Hospitals are overflowing with patients and doctors say they lack medicine, beds and space for the wounded.

“The patients are overwhelming us,” said Dr. Dahir Dhere, the head of the Medina Hospital.

Those wounded during the fighting were admitted at the city’s three main medical centers, doctors and staff in Medina, Keysaney and Deynile hospitals told the Associated Press by telephone.

“The death toll continues to mount and more than 250 people — mainly civilians — who were wounded in the fighting and the subsequent shelling are being treated at the hospitals,” said. Dr. Hassan Gutale.

Abdi Ahmed, crouching by the hospital beds of his 2-year-old daughter and 6-year old son, wounded in the fighting, said another of his sons had been killed.

“One of my children ... had his head cut off with a knife and two others are here,” he said.

At the town’s main cemetery, Faduma Siyad wept over the bodies of her three sons and husband, who she said were killed by the Ethiopians on Thursday.

“I have lost all my family,” she sobbed, before crying out the obligatory “God is great” over their bodies. A steady stream of residents fleeing the city streamed past her. Over half of Mogadishu’s residents have already left.

“I am running with my children, we do not know our exact destination. We are heading to wherever we think is safer,” said Halima Muse, a mother of six children with a haggard face.

The fighting was sparked when Ethiopian troops began patrols two days ago in a southern Mogadishu neighborhood seen as a hotbed of support for the Islamic insurgents. Two Ethiopians were killed, and the mutilated body of one of the soldiers was dragged though the streets by protesting women and children. The Ethiopians subsequently fired tank shells into a civilian market.

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