At least 113 civilians have been killed during three days of heavy fighting in the Somali capital, a Somali human rights group said Friday.
Between Wednesday and 2 p.m. (6 a.m. ET) Friday, 229 people were wounded, said Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairman of the decade-old Elman Human Rights Organization. He said his organization collated the figures from hospitals, local residents and its agents recording burials in Mogadishu.
"We condemn both sides of the conflict and call on them to immediately stop the mass massacre in the capital," Ahmed told The Associated Press.
On Friday, the U.N. refugee agency revised its estimates of people who fled Mogadishu to 321,000, up from 218,000 this week, saying the additional figures were from new information about Mogadishu residents who had fled to central Somalia towns.
Somalia's capital is estimated to have a population of 2 million people.
Mogadishu streets were the scene of continuous heavy fighting on Friday between insurgents and Ethiopian troops backing the government. On Thursday, a suicide car bomb exploded at an Ethiopian army base that government officials blamed on al-Qaida elements.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy.
The transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help, but has struggled to extend its control over the country.
