20 Somali army vehicles seized
2006-10-17 22:01
Kismayu - Troops loyal to powerful Somali Islamists have seized trucks mounted with machine guns and anti-aircraft rockets from rival militia they fought at the weekend, said an Islamist official on Tuesday.
Sunday night's clashes in Jibil, a farming town about 110km north of Kismayu port, killed four and stoked fears of mounting violence in the Horn of Africa nation.
"We have taken over 20 vehicles, including three big trucks mounted with anti-aircraft missiles," said Dahir Ahmed, a local Islamist official.
"This was necessary in order to improve security."
There was no immediate independent confirmation about the seizure.
World's most heavily armed populations
Dahir also said 68 gunmen formerly allied to Barre Hiraale, the defence minister in Somalia's embattled interim government, had joined the Islamist ranks in the south.
But Dahir said he had information other pro-government fighters were advancing on Islamist positions around Jilib.
"Fighting can start anytime," he said. "We want to hit them so hard that they will never recover."
Many Somalis fear that clashes between Islamists and other forces could escalate to a full blown conflict, which may suck in other regional powers and destabilise the Horn.
The claimed seizure in Jibil came two days after Abdullahi Maalim Ali, the Islamists' head of internal security, said the movement planned to take guns away from one of the world's most heavily armed populations.
The rise of the Islamists
If the ambitious plan is implemented in the country - which became synonymous with anarchy after the 1991 ouster of a dictator - it would leave the Islamists Somalia's sole possessors and regulators of weapons in areas they control.
The rise of the Islamists, who control the capital Mogadishu and a large swathe of southern Somalia, has posed a direct challenge to the interim government's attempt to enforce central rule on the nation of 10 million people.
Although some Somalis complain of the severity of Islamist rule which adheres to strict sharia law, others credit the group with bringing a degree of law and order to a country starved of normalcy for 15 years.