Helicopter shot down as battles engulf Mogadishu

By Sahal Abdulle

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Rebels shot down a helicopter gunship in Mogadishu on Friday and Ethiopia said its forces had killed 200 insurgents in a two-day joint offensive with Somali troops against Islamists and clan militia.

Aid workers said scores of civilians also died in the city's worst fighting in years. Shells crashed down and deafening tank fire shattered buildings as guerrillas replied with barrages of mortars, missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.

"Ethiopia has killed 200 armed remnants of the Islamic Courts Union and wounded many others," Ethiopia's Information Ministry said in a statement broadcast on national television.

Mogadishu residents cowered at home and reporters watched from rooftops earlier on Friday as two Ethiopian helicopters fired on a rebel stronghold before one was hit by a missile.

"Smoke billowed from the cabin and it turned toward the ocean," one witness, Swiss journalist Eugen Sorg, told Reuters. "It crashed at the south end of the airport runway."

Ugandan peacekeepers pulled two bodies from the wreckage.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply disturbed" by the sharp escalation in violence.

"He is particularly concerned about the use of air strikes and the introduction of tanks and heavy artillery into densely populated parts of the city," a spokesman said in a statement.

More than 230 people have been wounded since Thursday, and the toll of dead and maimed looked sure to rise. The International Committee of the Red Cross said scores had been killed in the city's worst fighting for more than 15 years.

"A mortar has just fallen into the house next to me. We can hear crying," said Faisal Jamah, a south Mogadishu resident.

"There are a lot of wounded, but there is no way to take them to the hospitals due to the fighting."

GRUESOME SCENES

Mobs dragged dead Ethiopian soldiers through the streets on Thursday, and wild-eyed gunmen posed with the corpses.

The bloody scenes recalled the shooting down by militiamen of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in 1993 during a failed U.S. mission to hunt down Mogadishu warlords.

With some of the clan militia who used to rule the capital fighting alongside the Islamists, the battles have torn to shreds a brief and shaky truce between the Ethiopian military and the city's dominant clan, the Hawiye.