09/11/07 (B420-B) BBC Les insurgents somaliens exhibent dans les rues de Mogadiscio, les cadavres de deux soldats éthiopiens tués. Bodies dragged through Mogadishu (En anglais – Info lectrice)

Somali insurgents have dragged the bodies of two dead Ethiopian soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu after a day of heavy battles.

Residents say hundreds of people trailed after them, pelting the corpses with stones, chanting "God is Great".

Similar scenes were witnessed after Somali militiamen shot down two US Black Hawk helicopters in 1993.

Thousands of Somalis have been killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced, by renewed fighting in the capital.

The BBC’s Mohamed Olad Hassan says clashes in the Huriwa neighbourhood in north-eastern Mogadishu were sparked when the Ethiopians tried to patrol.

"They came here in their hundreds just after dawn and met stiff resistance from the insurgents, using rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns," resident Seynab Sheikh told our reporter.

The clashes subsided only after the Ethiopians withdrew.

Aid workers in Mogadishu itself say the fighting has become so bad that civilians who are wounded are unable to get help and frequently bleed to death.

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Eric Laroche, told parliament in Baidoa that 1.5 million Somalis were in need of emergency aid, the Reuters news agency reports.

"We have to be able to help them – and we have a problem reaching them," Mr Laroche was reported as saying.