MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) – The top American diplomat for Africa made a surprise visit to Somalia Saturday to meet with the transitional government and help shore up a cease-fire in a conflict with Islamist insurgents that has left hundreds dead.

American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frazer said Somalia must leave behind its bloody past and focus on national reconciliation to end 16 years of conflict that has dogged the nation and allowed suspected Al Qaeda plotters to hide there.

“Somalia unfortunately has become a haven for terrorists and that continues to be a prime concern of the United States of America,” she said at a news conference after meeting Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi.

Ms. Frazer is the highest-ranking American envoy to visit since 1993, the year of the notorious downing of two American Black Hawk helicopters – which was followed by a firefight that killed some 300 Somalis in 12 hours. America withdrew a year later.

She was supposed to come to Somalia in January but the trip was called off at the last minute due to security concerns. She flew Saturday to the government stronghold of Baidoa, an agricultural town 155 miles southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, amid extremely tight security. She left for Nairobi, Kenya, without traveling to Mogadishu.

Her unannounced visit came on the sixth day of a fragile cease-fire that halted fighting in the battle-scarred capital that has sent thousands fleeing.

A local human rights group says more than 1,000 civilians were killed or injured in four days of the fighting in Mogadishu between insurgents and Ethiopian-backed Somali government forces using tanks, artillery and attack helicopters.

Late last year, American special forces helped Somali troops and their Ethiopian backers push out the Islamist fighters, who had taken over the capital and surrounding. America says the Islamists were harboring Al Qaeda members.

America also is a major financial supporter of the weak transitional Somali government and a small force of African Union peacekeepers, having pledged more than $120 million.

On Friday, a European Union conflict expert said in an e-mail obtained by the AP, that Ethiopian and Somali forces may have committed war crimes during heavy artillery shelling against the Islamic insurgency in the capital and that foreign donors could be complicit.

The warning was made in an urgent e-mail to Eric van der Linden, the chief EU official for Kenya and Somalia, who confirmed the message’s authenticity to the AP.

One Somali human rights group, which asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said it was gathering evidence of war crimes in Somalia for submission to the International Criminal Court for possible future prosecutions.

President Yusuf and his Cabinet ministers have repeatedly called for civilians to leave their homes because insurgents have fired mortars at Ethiopian and government troops from densely populated neighborhoods.

The U.N. refugee agency says some 124,000 people have fled Mogadishu since the beginning of February, including 11,000 in the past six days.