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As violence in Somalia creates a staggering wave of refugees, the United Nations has warned that factions on both sides of the fight – Islamist rebels and pro-government militias – are committing atrocities against innocent civilians.

Cycles of violence have shaped Somalia's history for the past two decades. A particularly devastating one has flared in the past month. On May 7, an Al Qaeda-linked group called Al Shabab, which is fighting for an Islamic state, began a major offensive to oust the moderate government from power.

That government's allies include about 4,000 African Union peacekeepers, who have proven ineffective in stemming the violence. Fighting has torn apart the countryside, and increasingly focused on the capital, Mogadishu, one of the last bastions of government power.

The United Nations now says that more than 100,000 people have been displaced, hundreds killed, and atrocities committed on both sides, including shelling civilian homes. An increasing swirl of illegal weapons, meanwhile, looks set to fuel the violence for a long time to come.

According to Voice of America, the tide of refugees out of Mogadishu is "the most concentrated displacement of civilians the city has seen in years."

"It is certainly the highest we have seen in Somalia for many, many years," [UNICEF's acting representative for Somalia, Hannan] Suleiman said. "We have not seen this number of people in such a short period of time being displaced."

As the refugees flee, the UN warns they are subjected to atrocities by both sides, according to Agence France-Presse.

"The manner in which civilians are being victimised by this conflict is unacceptable," said William Spindler, spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Most of the displaced are women and children, said Spindler, adding that there have been reports of rape and sexual exploitation even in places where they have sought refuge.

This last wave of violence does not appear likely to abate any time soon. In a move that could have troubling repercussions, two Islamist factions appear to be uniting under one front to attack the country's Western-backed government, according to a report by the Associated Press published by Somaliland Press, an independent news site based in Hargeisa, Somaliland.

Militiamen loyal to Islamic Party leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys have been fighting side-by-side in recent weeks with al-Shabab, an extremist Islamist group considered by the U.S. State Department to be a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab denies that.

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