Nairobi/Mogadishu - Fresh clashes between Islamic insurgents and African Union peacekeepers have broken out in the Somali capital Mogadishu, reports said Wednesday.

The BBC reported that insurgents attacked the AU peacekeepers, who responded with tank and artillery fire, late on Tuesday night.

Some of the AU fire landed in residential neighbourhoods, killing at least ten civilians, eyewitnesses told the BBC.

No AU casualties were reported.

Heavy clashes have been ongoing since insurgents shelled Mogadishu airport last Friday as an AU plane defied a flight ban.

No planes had landed since Tuesday after insurgent group al- Shabaab said it would destroy any aircraft that attempted to touch down at the airport.

Clashes around the airport and in the heavily populated Bakara market, which is seen as a stronghold of Islamist insurgents, have since claimed the lives of over 30 people.

Thousands of people are reported to be filing out of Mogadishu to escape the battles - the worst sustained violence for months.

The Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization this week said that a total of 9,474 civilians have died in the insurgency since early 2007.

Hundreds of thousands have already fled and are living in makeshift camps outside Mogadishu or in the Dadaab refugee complex in the east of neighbouring Kenya.

Almost daily battles have blighted the Horn of Africa nation since Ethiopian troops invaded in 2006 to kick out the Islamist regime and put the transitional federal government back in power.

The government and moderate opposition figures have signed a peace agreement, with the technical details of the ceasefire still being hammered out, but al-Shabaab has rejected the deal.

Ethiopian troops must leave before any peace can be negotiated, al-Shabaab says.

The Horn of Africa nation has been plagued by chaos and clan-based civil war since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991. (dpa)