Fighting makes life unbearable in Mogadishu

By Sahal Abdulle

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Faced with the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu for more than a decade, residents wonder when the shooting will end and their lives begin again.

Escalating battles pitting the interim government and their Ethiopian allies against Islamist fighters and elements of the Hawiye clan have turned parts of Mogadishu into a ghost town.

"Life has become unbearable," said jobless resident Ibrahim Maalim. "I can still hear sporadic shooting in the north of the city. Mogadishu is fast becoming uninhabitable."

In some areas of the coastal city, the sandy streets are emptied of cars and people, teachers have shut schools, and houses riddled with bullet holes stand silent.

More than 200,000 people, a fifth of the city's population, have fled by donkey, cart, foot and vehicle since February -- leaving whole neighborhoods to fighters who rattle their machine guns at each other behind make-shift sand banks.

Abdifatah Abdikadir says he too might join the exodus.

"Whenever my children hear bullet shots or heavy explosions, they cry pleading with me to take them out of Mogadishu. Even my wife has joined in the chorus now," he said.

"The entire north of the city is empty ... I went there yesterday, there is no life there. It looked horrible."