Somali government forces attacked rebel strongholds in Mogadishu today, triggering battles across the capital that killed at least 45 people, the highest daily death toll for months.
Neighbouring states and Western security forces fear Somalia, which has been mired in civil war for 18 years, could become a haven for militants linked to al Qaeda.
"At least 45 people including 28 civilians died in today's fighting," Ali Yasin Gedi, vice chairman of Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said.
"One hundred and eighty two people, including civilians and the warring groups were also injured."
Residents scuttled across the dusty streets and sheltered by walls as heavy gunfire shook the capital. Some children milled around near a dead body, its blood draining into the sand.
Fighters wearing headscarves with ammunition belts draped over their shoulders loitered on a corner as a battered 4x4 pickup truck with a heavy machinegun on top raced past.
The government says there is little hope of negotiating with the Shabaab gunmen trying to topple it. The administration says the rebels have no political agenda and have hundreds of foreign extremists in their ranks.
"The opposition groups have been provoking us for the last three weeks," said defence minister Mohamed Abdi Gandi.
"We shall continue fighting this opposition with foreign ideologies. They want to destroy our government by the use of violence but it will not be," he told reporters.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, an influential Islamist opposition leader who once ran Mogadishu with President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, also said his forces would battle on.
"We shall defeat the government soon, God willing," he told Reuters in his Mogadishu home. "We should not be deceived by Westerners like Sharif."
The heaviest fighting for months has killed scores of civilians and uprooted tens of thousands in the last two weeks.
Reuters