Heavy fighting in the Somali capital of Mogadishu has killed nearly 400 civilians and wounded up to 700.
Diplomats from an International Contact Group on Somalia met in Cairo to discuss how to stop the fighting and staunch a torrent of refugees.
More bodies were expected to be unearthed in crumpled buildings after four days of battles that ended on Sunday and which aid agencies say were the bloodiest for 15 years.
Scores of fighters also died in the offensive by the Somali government and its Ethiopian ally against insurgents. The battles in residential areas included ferocious artillery fire.
The local Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said the battles killed 381 civilians and wounded another 565, in the first comprehensive count of casualties. The Red Cross said it had counted 700 wounded in three city hospitals it supplies.
A truce held for a second day today as elders from the coastal capital's dominant clan, the Hawiye, met with Ethiopian commanders, a Hawiye spokesman said. But fighters on both sides are still dug in around the city, and there were fears of a swift resumption of fighting.
The European Union has called for a lasting ceasefire to allow humanitarian workers access.
Nearly 50,000 people have fled the city in the last 10 days, the United Nations says, bringing the total to almost 100,000 - or a tenth of Mogadishu's population - since February.
Ethiopia says 200 insurgents, drawn from clan militias and a militant Islamist group, were killed in an onslaught intended to obliterate the insurgency.
Ethiopia joined with President Abdullahi Yusuf's interim government in late 2006 to drive out the Islamists, who had controlled most of south Somalia for six months.
The Islamists, who deny Ethiopian and US accusations of al-Qaeda links, were heavily defeated but have now regrouped.