GENEVA, Sept 25 (Reuters) - At least 12,000 people in Mogadishu have fled their homes in the past week because of intensified fighting in the Somali capital, the United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday. "It is a very conservative estimate," said Catherine Weibel, spokeswoman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Islamist insurgents are battling Somalia's transitional government and its Ethiopian military backers in a nearly two-year conflict. On Tuesday night, insurgents shelled an African Union peacekeeping base in Mogadishu, prompting heavy return fire and tank incursions into a market area viewed as a rebel stronghold. They said the attack was retribution for the shelling of a market the previous day that killed at least 42 people. About half of the 12,000 newly displaced people have sought shelter within Mogadishu, while the rest have fled to Afgoye, 30 km (19 miles) southwest of the bombed-out capital, according to Weibel, who spoke by telephone from Nairobi, Kenya. Some 850,000 people have been uprooted from Mogadishu since early 2007, of whom at least 350,000 fled to Afgoye, she said. More than 110 people wounded by fighting were admitted to two Mogadishu hospitals since the weekend, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. "There may be more war-wounded who couldn't reach the hospitals," ICRC spokeswoman Anna Schaaf told Reuters. The neutral humanitarian agency distributed a "war-wounded kit", containing enough surgical and medical supplies to treat 100 people, at Somali hospitals earlier this week, she said. The ICRC has Somali staff working in Mogadishu. Its expatriate workers for Somalia are based in Nairobi and travel in and out of the country when security conditions permit it. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Laura MacInnis)
Somali refugees sleep in a hut after they survived a boat capsize off the southern Yemeni area of Rada September 24, 2008. Yemeni officials said five women and a child drowned ...
