Hundreds of civilians wounded in Somali fighting, says Red C

[Burco Boss]

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Hundreds of civilians have been wounded in fighting in the Somali capital between Ethiopian-backed government forces and Islamic insurgents, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Saturday.

More than 430 people, the vast majority of them civilians, have been admitted to hospitals since January, when government and Ethiopian forces drove out a ruling Islamic group, said Pascal Hundt, the head of the ICRC Somali delegation. This month alone 200 wounded have been brought in, including at least 30 women and 24 children.

``It is a war zone,'' Hundt told The Associated Press as more wounded were taken to hospitals after another night of violence in which at least 10 people were killed.

The fighting is the heaviest seen in this violent city in a year, he added.

``During the month of February armed clashes in Mogadishu have increased in frequency and intensity, leaving dozens of people dead and many wounded and driving civilians from their homes,'' he said. Hundt said civilians must be protected.

Insurgents attacked Somalia's former Defense Ministry late Friday. Ethiopian troops returned fire with tanks and heavy artillery fire, which hit some residential areas, Yusuf Didad Grarad, a Somali traditional elder, told the AP.

The capital of 2 million people remained tense Saturday as families continued to flee to safer areas outside the coastal city.

Meanwhile, Ugandan troops will arrive in Somalia within two weeks to help train a national Somali army and to provide security for the transitional government, a Somalia official said Friday.

Islamic extremists have threatened suicide attacks against Ugandan and other foreign troops deployed as part of an 8,000-member African Union peacekeeping force.

The African Union has received more than US$44 million (euro34 million) in donations from the European Union, U.S. and Britain to pay for the Somali peacekeeping mission, an AU spokesman, Assane Ba, said from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved its deployment.

In December and January, Somalia's transitional government, backed by Ethiopian troops, drove out an Islamic movement that had gained control of the capital and most of the south.

Ethiopian troops have started to pull out, to be replaced by the peacekeeping force, which will have to confront the growing violence that has plagued Mogadishu since the interim government took over.

A newly formed extremist group, the Popular Resistance Movement in the Land of the Two Migrations, posted a new warning to peacekeepers this week.

``We promise we shall welcome them with bullets from heavy guns, exploding cars and young men eager to carry out martyrdom operations against these colonial forces,'' said a man who read from a statement in a video posting to an Islamic Web site.

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator, carved up the capital into armed, clan-based camps, and left most of the rest of the country ungoverned.