MOGADISHU, (Reuters):

Abdullahi Ahmed Gedi, a crippled Somali man, was cowering in a Mogadishu alley with his family when a mortar round came crashing down on them.

His wife was killed and his daughter wounded. As his brother raced to their rescue, they were all hit again.

"We were all hiding in a corner when the shelling struck us the first time," Gedi told Reuters, staring at the ground in shock. "Then we were hit again, killing my daughter and my brother who had come to take us to safety."

Sitting outside the capital's main hospital, Madina, Gedi was one of hundreds of traumatised residents seeking help on the third day of a major offensive by Ethiopian and government forces against Islamist insurgents and clan militia. With artillery duels smashing buildings and gunbattles raging down the streets, civilians have been the main victims.

The hospital's compound was overflowing with casualties on Saturday. Many lay in the open, and throughout the decrepit building maimed children and adults screamed in pain. A stream of battered pickup trucks and sweaty men pushing hand-carts dropped fresh casualties at the gates.

Shortages

Nearby,an old woman fed her seven-month-old granddaughter. Her daughter and four-year-old grandson were killed when a shell landed on their street, she said. Six other people died.

Emergency tents were put up to serve as wards, Madina's director Sheikhdon Salad Elmi said they still had drugs, but were running short of beds, linen and mattresses.

About 40 per cent of casualties seen so far were women and children, he said, and almost all of the injured were civilians.

Aid workers say scores of civilians died in the first two days of fighting. But no one knows exactly how many.

The main problem is that the streets are just too dangerous for families to risk carrying wounded loved ones outside. And no buses or taxis are running.

Few doctors have also been able to make it to work.

"They cannot drive due to the fighting around their homes, and I have suggested they try to walk, but even that is becoming impossible now," Elmi said.

Life in Mogadishu was already hard for most of its inhabitants before the latest round of bloodshed, with poverty and frequent gunbattles compounded by recent outbreaks of suspected cholera.