Hussein Moamin Dahir had no answer for John Holmes, the highest-ranking U.N. official to visit Somalia’s capital in more than a decade.

“It’s not safe here,” Dahir said, surrounded by some clothes and a few pots.

Violence cut Holmes’ visit short. Two bombs went off in the capital during his stay, one of them just 1,300 feet from the U.N. compound, killing three civilians.

Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, left Somalia the same day he arrived rather than spend the night as planned.

But he did travel through Mogadishu in an armored Land Cruiser to the presidential palace, where he urged President Abdullahi Yusuf to allow humanitarian aid to get to those in need immediately.

At least 400,000 fled Mogadishu during weeks of fighting that pitted the government and its Ethiopian allies against Islamic insurgents. The fighting between March 12 and April 26 killed at least 1,670 people.

The government declared victory about two weeks ago, and there has been relative calm. But in a city teeming with guns after more than a decade of chaos, the government has declared victory before only to have insurgents reappear.

“While the fighting was going on, we were very, very concerned about the plight of civilians. Clearly it was not the normal respect for humanitarian law,” Holmes told the president.

He asked Yusuf to allow humanitarian aid to enter Mogadishu without delay and to dismantle any checkpoints inside and outside the city so that food and relief supplies could get through.

Yusuf told Holmes his government was trying.

“We are doing our best. Unfortunately, these terrorists are conducting guerrilla warfare. Now they have been defeated twice,” Yusuf said. “Many of them fled away, but they left a group of terrorists in the city, so they continue these terrorist actions.”

“What we did was in self-defense,” the president said about the latest fighting. “We had to defend the government.”

Yusuf told Holmes that “humanitarian aid will reach whoever needs it.”

After the meeting, Holmes said the fighting in the city had violated international humanitarian law. “When you have a pitched battle going on in a city full of civilians, that is not in accordance with the Geneva Conventions,” he said.

U.S. helped oust rebels

The insurgents are linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, which ruled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six quiet months last year. They were ousted in a swift operation with the crucial help of troops and helicopter gunships from neighboring Ethiopia and U.S. special forces.

The United States has accused the group of links to al Qaeda, which the courts have consistently denied. The militants reject any secular government and have sworn to launch an Iraq-style insurgency.

Holmes said he was disappointed that his trip was cut short, but he got “a first-hand appreciation for the appalling situation in Mogadishu.”

Besides his meeting with Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, Holmes got to see the makeshift camp where Dahir and more than 200 others live in squalor on the former site of the British Embassy in this once-beautiful seaside capital.

He also saw a cholera treatment center, a crumbling white building with small wooden cots for children suffering from the waterborne disease.

Hawa Ali Said said she arrived at the cholera center this week to look after her 2-year-old nephew, Said, who was sprawled on a cot with an intravenous tube in his arm. Her sister’s other son, 8, had died a day earlier from the disease.

“Said is getting better, but I still see he is ill,” she said. “Before he came here, he was crying, the diarrhea was terrible. Now, at least, he sleeps.”

Somalia’s life expectancy is 48 years, and a quarter of children die before they reach 5. In many areas of Somalia, malnutrition rates are 20 percent or above.

The country has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned against one another.