"We had just finished classes when the fighting broke out," he told AP. "When the children heard the gunfire, they just scattered.

"I could not hide myself because I was trying to stop the children running," he said.

The gunmen attacked in minibuses and small cars before fleeing. Ethiopian troops used artillery to return fire, Abdi said.

Gunbattles erupted in several locations in the city of 2 million, with insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns during the attacks on an Ethiopian military base and a military convoy.

One Ethiopian military truck carrying soldiers was hit by a rocket and caught fire, said witness Shino Moalin Norow, who sells drinking water near the scene.

Three civilians were wounded and taken to a hospital, witnesses said.

The peacekeepers, all from Uganda, are the vanguard of a larger force authorized by the United Nations to help the government assert its authority and to allow Ethiopian forces to leave. Insurgents believed to be the remnants of the Council of Islamic Courts have staged almost daily attacks against the government, its armed forces and the Ethiopians.

Meanwhile at least 42 people, mainly children, have died in the last 24 hours from a suspected cholera outbreak in southern Somalia, doctors said.

More than 240 others have been hospitalized, and doctors fear more deaths because of the lack of proper medical facilities or medicines in the war-ravaged country.

Somalia descended into chaos in 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator, carved the capital into armed, clan-based camps, and left most of the rest of the country ungoverned. The transitional government was formed in 2004 with UN help, but has struggled to assert control.

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