"In the six months the Islamic Courts were here, less than 20 people lost their lives through violence," Hussein Adow, a businessman waiting for medical help outside the Madina hospital, told The Times on April 26.

"Now many die in ten minutes."

In December, Somali interim government forces backed by troops from regional military giant Ethiopia routed the Supreme Islamic Courts of Somalia (SICS) in a two-week war.

Since then, the capital Mogadishu has plunged into an abyss with daily clashes.

Officials and human rights workers say at least 329 people have been killed so far in the recent April fighting.

For many residents, the fighting contrasts with the stability under the SICS.

"The Islamic Courts brought peace and we were happy," said Abdirahman Figi, the Madina hospital director.

He said the Ethiopians had shelled his hospital, the largest in the capital, stolen money and medicines and then commandeered it for barracks.

Figi insists that the Ethiopian-backed powerless interim government is "worse than the warlords."

The UN said Thursday that all sides are breaking the humanitarian law by indiscriminately firing on civilian areas and said that up to 400,000 people have fled the ghost city of Mogadishu.

Chatham House, a leading independent British think-tank, has accused the US and Ethiopia of hampering international efforts to bring peace to the war-torn country.

It blasted as "highly provocative" the intervention of Ethiopia in early 2007 with US support to counter the rising SICS.

Chatham House researchers Cedric Barnes and Harun Hassan said support for the brief SICS regime is likely to re-emerge.

"This experience dramatically underlines the benefits of the brief period of ‘Islamist’ authority in southern Somalia which already begins to seem like a ‘Golden Age’," they said.

Somalia has not had a functional ruling for 16 years with more than 14 internationally-backed attempts to create a government eventually foundered.

During its six-month rule, the Islamic Courts reunited powerful clans which has long controlled the capital.