Corpses in Mogadishu streets after battles kill 81

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Corpses lay on the streets ofMogadishu on Monday after at least 81 people were killed inbattles over the weekend between Islamist-led insurgents andEthiopian troops supporting Somalia's interim government.

Northern districts of the coastal capital suffered theworst of the most intense fighting for months, with both sidesexchanging barrages of mortar rounds and heavy machinegun fire.

The city was quiet early on Monday.

"This morning as I was trying to escape the fighting whichI feared might restart, I saw four dead men I knew lying in theneighbourhood," resident Hussein Abdulle said by telephone.

Another resident, Abdulahi Mohamud, told Reuters that atleast 20 people -- mostly women and children -- were trapped ina mosque where Ethiopian tank crews had dug deep defensivetrenches.

"Two Somalis who have been beheaded are also lying there,"Mohamud said from the northern district of Huruwa.

The Somali government and its Ethiopian military allies aretrying to crush remnants of a hardline sharia courts movementthat they chased out of Mogadishu at the end of 2006.

The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, a localgroup which tracks the violence, says at least 81 people werekilled and 119 wounded in the clashes on Saturday and Sunday.

Its researchers estimate that some 6,500 residents werekilled last year by fighting in the capital alone, while 1.5million were uprooted from their homes.

Aid workers say 250,000 civilians sheltering in squalidconditions just outside Mogadishu are considered the biggestgroup of internally displaced people in the world.

President Abdullahi Yusuf's interim government says it hasa right to self defence in the face of a deepening Iraq-styleinsurgency of near-daily assassinations and roadside bombingsthat it blames on the Islamists.

The rebels have also launched an increasing number ofhit-and-run raids on smaller towns -- seizing control fromlocal administrations that are often little more than militias,only to melt away before government reinforcements arrive.

(Writing by Daniel Wallis)

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