Somali Warlords Relinquish Weapons, Islamists Continue Fight

In a major step toward helping the fledgling government consolidate power, one of the most feared warlords in Somalia, Mohamed Dheere, gave the 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, 55 miles north of Mogadishu, said Abdirahman Dinari, the government spokesman.

But fears of an Islamic fundamentalist insurgency grew following an ambush Saturday morning on a convoy of Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu. Late Friday, government troops repelled an attack on the Somali president's palace.

The gunmen fired on the convoy but missed. The Ethiopians returned fire, 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, who was among three people wounded. "They shot at me and the others indiscriminately ... they shot everybody who was moving around."

On Saturday, a leader in Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts said his group was responsible for the attacks on the convoy and palace and promised that they would continue.

The Islamists don't care who dies as long as they can return to power. If they have to turn Mogadishu red with the blood of the transitional government, the Ethiopian forces, and the resident population, so be it. That's the ultimate goal - to reestablish an Islamic state in Somalia from which to spread their Islamist ideology across the border into Ethiopia, Kenya and beyond.

That Somalia would also be a safe harbor for al Qaeda is a continuing worry, which is why the US continues to provide tactical and logistical assistance to the Ethiopians, along with a small contingent of US forces inside Somalia hunting down al Qaeda operatives.