Mogadishu life is a 'horror film'

Student Mohamed Abdi, 35, was in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, during the recent heavy fighting. He told the BBC News website how the fighting was relentless and how he feared for his life.

Mogadishu is a mess after the heavy fighting

I can't express how horrible the heavy fighting was. It was like a horror film.

I was here in the city all those days when the fighting was going on.

Those 10 days were so difficult... Being bombed, the mortar shelling - the fighting did not stop, day and night.

If you went out to eat, you could not be sure if you would return to your home. When you saw a friend, you could not be sure if you would see your friend again... you would say goodbye to each other, wondering if it would be the last.

One night I had to seek cover in Bakara Market as I couldn't make it home. But the market became a target and was bombed several times that night.

All night I couldn't sleep. I feared for my life and for all the others there with and around me.

'The watchman'

When dawn broke I ventured out - people were lying on the ground everywhere, mostly dead.

Mostly women and children fled the fighting while the men stayed

There was an old man who had been one of the market's watchmen. Fragments of shells had hit him where he had been guarding.

He had bled all night.

We wanted to take him to hospital but we couldn't find a car. Finally we found a man with a car and we convinced him to take the watchman to hospital. We pleaded with him to take the watchman.

That watchman, I still think of him how he was when we found him - old, with no family and bleeding.

I don't know if he lived. I went to the hospital but couldn't find him.

'Such a mess'

I am studying at the Somali Institute for Management and Administration Development which is on one of the main roads in the city - we call it 'The Military Road' because it is where the military convoys pass by.

Since the lull in the fighting our classes have resumed again.

About three of the buildings were damaged by the shelling and all of the campus is a wreck. None of it has been cleared away yet. It is such a mess.

I haven't been able to attend my classes though as all my time is being spent trying to get my family back home.

My wife and child fled to Jowhar, 90km away from Mogadishu, when the fighting became very bad.

Here in Somalia you don't know who to blame for all our misfortune. Sometimes you blame yourself. I ask myself why was I born a Somali.

But some people blame the government, the Ethiopians and the Americans.

I don't know how stability will come back. I hope for a stable government.

The violence is a daily occurrence - if you don't experience it today, you will tomorrow.