Thousands flee Mogadishu
25/04/2008 16:02  - (SA)  

UK: Send UN troops to Somalia UN expert pans Somali violence UN: Somalia faces worst crisis 100s flee Somalia's capital Bodies lie in Mogadishu streets 81 killed in Mogadishu clashes

Nairobi - An estimated 8 000 people have fled Mogadishu since last weekend's clashes, the heaviest this year in the Somali capital, the UN's refugee agency said on Friday.

Some 700 000 people have already fled the coastal capital over the past year, sparking one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The latest fighting "has sparked a fresh exodus of an estimated 8 000 people," the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

The flight of thousands of civilians from the war-wracked city "further aggravates the situation in a country where over one million people are already internally displaced", the statement said.

According to an AFP count, at least 63 people - many of them civilians - have been killed since the eruption on April 19 of a bout of fighting between Ethiopian-backed Somali government forces and Islamist insurgents.

"Many of those fleeing the capital have sought safety in the bush or on the road leading to the small town of Afgooye... which has more than 250 000 displaced civilians already living in precarious conditions," the UNCHR said.

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