Nairobi - All warring parties in Somalia have committed war crimes against civilians including rape, murder and the use of people as human shields, a human rights' body said Monday.

"The combatants in Somalia have inflicted more harm on civilians than on each other," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

A bloody insurgency began in the Horn of Africa nation early 2007 after Ethiopian forces helped kick out the Islamic Courts' Union (ICU) - a hardline Islamist regime that was in power for six months.

The Horn of Africa nation has been plagued by chaos and civil war since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, but the last two years have been particularly miserable for civilians.

Aid agencies say around 10,000 civilians have died and over a million have fled to avoid the crossfire since the insurgency began.

A report released Monday by HRW - "So Much to Fear: War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia" - details how government forces, Ethiopian soldiers and insurgents have indiscriminately opened fire on civilian areas.

Drawing on the testimony of 80 witnesses, HRW accuses government forces and allied militia of torturing detainees, killing and raping civilians and looting their homes.

The report includes testimony from teenage girls raped by government forces, parents whose children were shredded by Ethiopian rockets and people shot by insurgents for working as messengers for the government.

Around 200,000 civilians have fled to neighbouring Kenya, even more are internally displaced and hundreds have died already this year as they attempted to cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, usually after being forced overboard or abandoned at sea by smugglers.

According to the UN, 3.2 million Somalis, 40 per cent of the total population, are dependent on humanitarian aid as a result of the conflict, drought and high food prices.

Western governments have backed the transitional federal government in the hope that it will halt the march of Islamist insurgent group al- Shabaab, which has made huge gains in recent months.

The US says that al-Shabaab has strong links to al-Qaeda and is concerned that an Islamist-controlled Somalia will be a breeding ground for terrorism.

However, HRW said that blindly supporting a regime that targets it own civilians is not the solution.

"There are no quick fixes in Somalia, but foreign governments need to stop adding fuel to the fire with misguided policies that empower human rights abusers," Gagnon said.

HRW called for a policy review and said that the incoming Obama administration would have the opportunity to "break with the failed policies of its predecessor."

Ethiopia announced in late November that it will pull it troops out by the end of the year, leaving behind only a small African Union peacekeeping force to help the government keep the insurgents at bay. (dpa)