Somali insurgents killed at least 10 people, including six policemen, in separate attacks hours after rejecting a UN-brokered peace deal.
An attack on a police base in Mogadishu and other attacks in the capital and Baidoa, brought to about 40 the number killed in an increase in fighting since the weekend between allied Ethiopian-Somali security forces and Islamist-led insurgents.
The latest attacks came after Islamist hardliners Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and Sheik Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki - who are both on US and UN lists of al Qaeda associates - rejected a peace deal signed in Djibouti.
Under UN mediation, the pact was agreed by representatives of Somalia's government and some members of the exiled opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) late on Monday.
But with militant ARS members and insurgents on the ground, scoffing at the deal, analysts say it will have negligible impact on the fighting on the ground.
Aweys and Turki both encouraged insurgents to keep attacking the government and its Ethiopian military allies.
Five officers and one civilian were killed when insurgents opened fire on Tuesday night at a police base - a typical attack in an Iraq-style campaign of hit-and-run raids, bombs and assassinations.
Witnesses saw five bodies in the street and police confirmed the other casualty.
Early today, gunmen killed the head of a Somali aid group called Woman and Child Care in Suq Baad neighbourhood in northern Mogadishu.
