Somalia's fledgling government received a boost when the last major warlord turned over his weapons and militia, but it faced a renewed threat from Islamic militants, who took credit for a string of guerrilla attacks and promised to continue fighting until the government agrees to talks.
On Saturday, one of the most feared warlords in Somalia, Mohamed Dheere, gave the government army chief 23 trucks mounted with heavy weapons and ordered 220 of his fighters to report for retraining at government camps. The handover took place during a ceremony in Dheere's stronghold of Jowhar, 90km north of Mogadishu, said a government spokesman.
A leader in Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts said on Saturday that his group was responsible for a series of recent attacks, including a mortar attack on the presidential palace late on Friday and an ambush on an Ethiopian convoy early on Saturday.
"This is a new uprising by the Somali people," said Ahmed Qare, deputy chairman of the council. "The only solution can be reconciliation and talks between the transitional federal government and the Islamic courts."
The internationally recognized government -- with key military backing from Ethiopia -- had managed to drive the Islamic movement that had challenged it out of Mogadishu and much of the rest of southern Somalia. But Islamic leaders have repeatedly threatened a guerrilla war as long as Ethiopian troops remain in Somalia to support the government.
The US and the EU have called on the government to hold broad-based peace talks to promote reconciliation, but so far only clan leaders and warlords have been involved and religious leaders have been excluded.
Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991. The transitional federal government is the 14th attempt to restore law and order since warlords divided the country into warring fiefdoms.
Unidentified gunmen fired light machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at an Ethiopian convoy on Saturday morning, but missed. The Ethiopian troops responded with heavy weapons, killing a man and a woman on the side of the road, said Hawa Malin, a resident who witnessed the ambush. Two other people died on the way to the hospital, medical officials said.
"The Ethiopians shot me," said Ali Kheyre Mumin, one of three people who were wounded. "They shot at me and the others indiscriminately ... they shot everybody who was moving around."
Late on Friday, attackers fired three mortars into the presidential compound and then engaged guards in a 30-minute fire fight, residents living nearby said. Ethiopian and government troops in tanks and heavily armed trucks rolled out of the compound and immediately sealed off the area. There were no reports of casualties.
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