UN: Confused, traumatized Somalis flee capital.

GENEVA (AP) - Thousands of confused, traumatized Somalis have fled the capital this week in some of the worst fighting of a 19-month insurgency, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.
At least 16,000 people have been chased from their homes in Mogadishu, said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Many have crammed into the Somali town of Afgooye, which is already flooded with more than 300,000 internally displaced people.
"The new wave of displacement is worsening an already catastrophic situation," Redmond told reporters in Geneva, where the agency has its headquarters.
He said more than 1 million people are displaced in Somalia, which has not had an effective government for more than 17 years. At the end of last year, there were nearly a half-million Somalis registered outside the country, but many more have fled without notifying authorities.
The crisis is exceeding even the worst-case scenarios imagined nearly two years ago, when troops from neighboring Ethiopia arrived to oust a radical Islamic militia and support the Western-backed government. The Ethiopian troops, which many Somalis consider an occupying force, are seen as a cause of the violence and not a cure.More