Ethiopian, Somali troops occupy former US embassy

MOGADISHU, Dec 29: Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies took over the former US embassy in Mogadishu today, expanding their control of key locations in the capital a day after Islamist rivals fled, witnesses said.

''Ethiopian troops and government soldiers have settled in the compound of the former U.S. embassy. I can see more than 30 Russian-made military trucks,'' said Abdi Hassan, one of hundreds of local residents gathered outside the former US mission.

The embassy compound, in a western neighbourhood of the coastal city, was abandoned more than a decade ago after US forces made a humiliating retreat from Somalia following an ill-fated mission depicted in the film ''Black Hawk Down''.

Government forces took effective control of Mogadishu on Thursday after a 10-day offensive with its Ethiopian allies to reclaim much of the territory seized by the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) since June.

The flight of the Islamists was a dramatic turn-around in the Horn of Africa nation after they had spread across the south imposing strict sharia rule and confining the interim government to its base in the provincial city of Baidoa until less than two weeks ago.

REUTERS