Heavy fighting resumed on Friday in the Somali capital of Mogadishu as thousands of civilians fleeing the city streamed the streets.
"We are escaping with our children to wherever we can get security," Mogadishu resident Yusuf Diriye told Xinhua, adding that all his neighbors in Wardigley district of Mogadishu have fled the city.
The fighting on Thursday, the fiercest since the Somali transitional government retook Mogadishu last December, claimed the lives of nearly 30 people and wounded more than 100 others, most of them civilians.
Also on Friday, an attack helicopter belonging to Ethiopian forces has been shot down as it was flying over Mogadishu, the local Shabelle radio reported.
Witnesses were quoted as saying the helicopter was hit by an anti-aircraft rocket around 12:10 PM local time (09:10 GMT) and it crashed as it landed at the airport. Another Ethiopian helicopter escaped to be shot down, the radio said.
Ethiopian helicopters launch air attacks at insurgent targets in Mogadishu on Thursday.
The latest violence came only a week after a ceasefire signed between Hawiye clan elders and Ethiopian troops led to a relative calm in the restive Somali capital.
The Somali government has pledged to pacify the city in time for the national reconciliation congress to be held in Mogadishu on April 16.
The Somali Parliament based in Baidoa, a town 250 km south of Mogadishu, has voted unanimously to relocate the cabinet to Mogadishu earlier this month.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former ruler Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy.
The transitional government was formed in 2004 with UN help, but has little authority across the country because it has no real army or police force.
(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2007)
