KEY POINTS:
British and American nationals are fighting in the ranks of Islamist militias in Somalia and the fundamentalist movement is being chiefly funded by sympathisers in Britain, it has been claimed.
The Deputy Prime Minister of the country's transitional Government accused Britain of being the main source of much of the money and men for the fighters of the Islamic Courts Union.
Hussain Mohammed Aideed said: "The ICU's main support was coming from London, paying cash to the ICU against the Government. Those who died in the war with the ICU were British passport holders and United States passport holders."
Aideed is the son of the warlord the American forces tried to kill or capture in their ill-fated intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s. A former member of the US armed forces, who grew up in America, Aideed told More4News: "They were the elite who went outside, were indoctrinated differently and were told that the Government is not a Muslim Government, but that it is a Government backed by infidels."
The Independent, in Mogadishu after the Somali capital was taken over by Islamist forces last summer, discovered a significant number of young Somalis who had returned to fight for the Islamists.
The Kenyan Government claimed it had arrested a number of ethnic Somali men trying to cross the border after Ethiopian forces, backing the Somali Government, retook Mogadishu and forced the Islamists to retreat.
Kenyan ministers said the men and their families were pretending to be refugees when there were signs they had been involved in the fighting.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi maintained that nationals from Britain, Canada, Pakistan and Sudan were among those captured or injured in the violence.
He told the French newspaper Le Monde: "Many international terrorists were killed. Photographs have been taken and passports from different countries collected. The Kenyans are detaining foreign passport holders. We have wounded people coming from Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan and the United Kingdom."
Britain's Foreign Office said it was investigating the claims.
"We take these reports very seriously and will do everything we can to look into them," a spokeswoman said.
"We are in constant touch with the Ethiopian and Somalian Governments and will look into this matter."
- INDEPENDENT
