Mogadishu

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said on Tuesday that Eritrean, Ethiopian rebel and Arab fighters were taken prisoner during the ousting of Islamists who held southern Somalia for six months. The Somali government, and its Ethiopian backers, have long said several thousand foreign fighters were aiding the Islamist movement.

Somali government forces marched on the last stronghold of the country’s powerful Islamist movement on Saturday, even as Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi called for dialogue with Islamist leaders. Residents said fighter jets, believed to be Ethiopian, were flying over Kismayo, about 500km south of the capital, prompting fears of attacks on the city.

Triumphant Somali government forces and their Ethiopian allies marched into Mogadishu on Thursday after Islamist rivals abandoned the war-scarred capital they had held for six months. The flight of the Islamists was a dramatic turn-around in the Horn of Africa nation after they had spread across the south imposing sharia rule and confined the interim government to its base in Baidoa.

Ethiopian and Somali government troops advanced to 30km from Islamist-held Mogadishu on Wednesday, but a representative said they would besiege the Somali capital rather than attack it. ”We are not going to fight for Mogadishu, to avoid civilian casualties. Our troops will surround Mogadishu until they [the Islamists] surrender,” Somali Ambassador Abdikarin Farah told reporters in Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia said on Tuesday it was halfway to crushing Somali Islamists as its forces advanced on the religious movement’s Mogadishu stronghold after a week of war in the Horn of Africa. Somalia’s envoy to Addis Ababa said Ethiopian troops were within 70km of the capital and could capture it in 24 to 48 hours.

Islamic fighters retreated from the main front line in Somalia early on Tuesday after a week of artillery and mortar duels and attacks by government and Ethiopian troops, witnesses said. Troops loyal to the Council of Islamic Courts withdrew more than 50km to the south-east from Daynuney, a town just south of Baidoa, the government headquarters.

Somali Islamists claimed to have captured a frontline position from Ethiopian-backed government forces on Saturday while the embattled Somali prime minister warned that foreign ”terrorists” had joined the ranks of the Islamic forces. As fighting raged between the country’s rival powers for a fourth straight day, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said that 4 000 ”foreign fighters” had infiltrated the lawless country.

European Union envoy met with senior leaders in Somalia on Wednesday to promote peace talks after weeks of sabre rattling and recent clashes between the besieged government and an advancing Islamic movement, which killed 10 people. Louis Michel, the European Commissioner for Development and aid, will try to get both sides to stop fighting.

Somalia’s government on Monday said its stand-off with the country’s powerful Islamic movement posed a ”grave danger” to the region and urged the world to step in and avert a looming all-out conflict. As Islamic and government forces faced off in southern Somalia, the government said a full-scale war in the lawless country would spill across borders.

Tension was high in southern Somalia on Saturday as forces loyal to the powerful Islamists and Ethiopia-backed government troops reinforced defences, setting the stage for fresh clashes, witnesses and officials said. A day after the Islamists threatened to attack Baidoa, rival sides deployed fighters and armoury on two fronts preparing for a new round of fighting, they said.

A senior official in Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement claimed responsibility on Thursday for a car-bomb attack near the seat of the weak Somali government, saying it hit an Ethiopian military post. The official, a senior member of the Islamists’ security branch, said the attack had killed at least 24 Ethiopian troops.

Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement said on Tuesday it would summon Muslim fighters from around the world to join its fight if the United Nations authorises a proposed peacekeeping mission. The warning came as the United States repares to introduce a UN Security Council resolution that would approve the force and ease a 1992 arms embargo.

Raging waters swept away and killed at least five sleeping children as a third week of torrential rains pounded southern Somalia, bringing the flooding death toll to at least 85, officials said on Friday. With downpours continuing and no end in sight to the unusually heavy seasonal, local officials said new overnight floods had hit the south.

At least eight people, including three children, were swept away and drowned in southern Somalia early on Wednesday as a river burst its banks following torrential downpours, elders said. Several dozen people were unaccounted for in villages along the Juba River in Somalia’s Gedo region, they said.

Fighting flared on Monday between Islamist forces and troops from the semi-autonomous northern enclave of Puntland in Somalia, which many fear is on the verge of all-out war, the Islamists said. But a minister in the Puntland administration denied that fighting had taken place.

Militias loyal to Somalia’s powerful Islamic movement expanded their control by taking over a strategic coastal town as peace talks with the country’s official government stalled. The fighters peacefully seized Hobyo in the central Mudug region on Tuesday night, according to an official with Somalia’s Council of Islamic Courts.

Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement called on Monday for the start of a threatened ”holy war” against Ethiopian troops allegedly on Somali territory, saying their graves would litter the country. In a speech on the eve of the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Islamists’ supreme leader urged all Somalis to immediately take up arms against invaders.

Somali soldiers, backed by Ethiopian forces, on Monday seized control of a town near the government base in south-central Somalia, forcing militia allied to the Islamic courts based in Mogadishu to flee from the town, witnesses said. They said hundreds of heavily armed government fighters and Ethiopian troops entered Burahakaba, about 60km south-east of Baidoa.