Islamists poised to take Somalia's third city

KISMAYO, Somalia - Islamist forces were poised to take over Somalia's strategic southern port city of Kismayo after the warlord in charge of the region fled, witnesses and officials said.

Colonel Abdikadir Adan Shire, also known as Barre Hiraale, is defence minister in Somalia's weak interim government and led the Juba Valley Alliance, an independent authority that has controlled the region around Somalia's third largest city.

His deputy, Yusuf Mire Mahmud, confirmed Barre Hiraale's hasty exit on Sunday following a split within the Alliance on how to respond to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which seized Mogadishu and other parts of southern Somalia earlier this year.

"I wanted to talk to the ICU, and he did not. He sent a delegation to Ethiopia and that was the final straw for me," Mahmud said.

"Tomorrow the people of Kismayo will welcome the courts," he said, adding that Islamist forces were some 100km away.

An Islamist source in the capital Mogadishu said troops were ready to enter the city "at the invitation of the people".

"We'll go in either late tonight or tomorrow morning," the source told Reuters.

Witnesses reported the city was calm and there was no sign it had been seized by the Islamists, whose advances since June have challenged the authority of the militarily weak interim government, backed by the West and regional power Ethiopia.

The Islamists have in the last month been urging Barre Hiraale to hand over the town, since many of the militias protecting it have clan alignments close to the Islamists.

Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari quoted deputy prime minister Hussein Mohammed Farah Aideed as saying any attack on Kismayo would breach a ceasefire deal between the administration and the Islamists agreed during recent talks in Khartoum.

"We're requesting that the international community pressurise the ICU to stop attacking," Dinari told Reuters from the government's temporary base in Baidoa.

Rumours of an impending flare-up in Kismayo have sent thousands of refugees fleeing to Kenya in recent days, with 300-600 arriving daily in the Dadaab camps just over the border, according to the United Nations.

Formed in 2004, the interim government of President Abdullahi Yusuf has struggled to reimpose central rule in Somalia for the first time since warlords ousted dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, carving the country into a patchwork of personal fiefdoms.

- REUTERS