Mustafa Haji Abdinur

Somali leaders launched a fresh bid on Sunday to chart a new future for the war-ravaged country and wind up a seven-year transition period.

Fighting raged in Mogadishu on Tuesday after extremists launched an offensive that the government said was a declaration of war on the Somali people.

Somalia’s embattled President, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, scrambled to salvage his six-month-old administration on Monday.

Somalia’s government was reeling on Friday from an insurgent suicide bombing that killed its security minister and 19 other people.

Somalis expressed growing fears of a relapse into violence on Friday as the African Union met to discuss the troubled deployment of a stabilisation force. Visiting United Nations envoy Francois Fall told interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Thursday Somalia had a better chance of peace than at any other time since the era of infighting among warlords began 16 years ago.

Somalia’s army, backed by Ethiopian forces, on Sunday extended their grip over remote regions in the far south of the country where Islamist fighters had been holed up for days, a commander said. Commander Abdulrasaq Afgebub said the joint forces were in control of Ras Kamboni, a scrubland area on the border with Kenya.