to payback the warlords for "Blackhawk down."

Somalia a nation in ruins, says rights group
Reuters

WORST SINCE GROZNY

HRW said it hoped Obama would break with the U.S. policy of occasional airstrikes against militants in Somalia and support for Ethiopia despite evidence of abuses by its soldiers.

"There is strong evidence that U.S. policies in Somalia have aggravated the very concerns about terrorism they seek to address...The aftermath of U.S. airstrikes has left a more lasting impression in the minds of many Somalis than U.S. funding for humanitarian assistance."

As well as civilians, foreign and local aid workers have borne the brunt of violence this year, with assassinations, attacks and kidnappings increasingly rife. At least 29 aid workers have been killed in 2008.

"Somalia is now the most dangerous place in the world for humanitarian workers," it said.

HRW said the Dadaab camps in Kenya, packed with fleeing Somalis, was the largest concentration of refugees in the world with more than 220,000 people. Much of the report was based on interviews with refugees there and elsewhere.

Large areas of Mogadishu are deserted, with 870,000 people, two-thirds of its residents, fleeing in the last two years. HRW said such destruction of a city was unprecedented since Grozny in Chechnya, devastated in an assault by Russian troops to root out Chechen separatists.