Fresh Somali clashes 'kill many'

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At least 47 people have been killed in Mogadishu in fresh fighting between Ethiopian-backed Somali forces and Islamists, a human rights group says.

Somalia's Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said most of the victims were civilians.

More than 210 people are now known to have been killed in the past five days of fighting in the Somali capital.

The government urged people living near rebel strongholds to move out before a planned offensive by the army.

Ethiopian forces have been in Mogadishu since December after helping Somalia's transitional government oust the Islamic Courts Union (UIC).

The UN says more than 320,000 people have fled fighting in the capital since February.

'Crimes against humanity'

The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said it had found the bodies of 41 civilians and six insurgents in Mogadishu on Sunday.

"The killing of civilians like this is a crime against humanity," the group's head Sudan Ali Ahmed told the Associated Press news agency.

"We urge the international community to send a team to investigate these crimes. They are war crimes," he said.

Dozens of people were wounded, as fighting continued to rage across the capital.

Some of the bodies have been laying rotting on the streets of the capital for days, reports say.

Doctors say they have been overrun with casualties, and there were reports of bodies laying rotting on the streets.

The UN has issued a warning of a humanitarian disaster.

Most of those who have fled lack food and water and hundreds have already died from cholera and diarrhoea, UN humanitarian co-ordinator Eric Laroche has said.

Somalia has not had a functional government since 1991. A transitional government was formed in 2004, but has so far failed to take full control of the country.

Ethiopian troops have started to withdraw, to be replaced by an African Union peacekeeping force, but only 1,200 of the 8,000 troops the AU says it needs have been deployed.

The latest upsurge in fighting began on Wednesday. The insurgents are believed to be a mixture of Islamists and militiamen from the Hawiye clan - the largest in Mogadishu.