More conflict in post-war Somalia, 4 dead

MOGADISHU, Jan 20 (Reuters) Somali gunmen battled government and Ethiopian troops today in a crowded Mogadishu market, killing four people in the latest flare-up after a war that ousted Islamists, witnesses and officials said.

The shootout -- following mortar strikes on the presidential palace after dark yesterday -- was the latest flare-up in a guerrilla-style campaign against the allied forces who ended the Islamists' six-month rule of the south at the New Year.

Civilians caught up in the melee said a gunman with an AK-47 opened fire on an Ethiopian military convoy at the livestock market in the north of the capital, triggering a heavy shootout.

The Ethiopians fired an anti-aircraft gun into the air, panicked bystanders fled for cover, and a tank ran over a minibus in the confrontation, they added.

''We were just setting up our shops when this happened,'' said an injured woman, writhing from bullet wounds in her back at Mogadishu's Medina hospital. ''A single gunman opened fire at the Ethiopian convoy, and the Ethiopians returned heavy fire.'' Four people died and about a dozen were injured, the witnesses told Reuters, indicating it was civilians who were mainly affected. It was not known if the gunman died.

Government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari, however, said he had only heard of two people dying. He said the incident began when government troops were chasing those behind Friday's shelling.

''They are doing this to try and show Mogadishu is not a stable place,'' Dinari said, adding that 16 of the city's quarters supported the government while only one -- dominated by Islamists supporters -- was against.

AFRICAN PEACEKEEPERS? The African Union (AU), which approved a peacekeeping force for Somalia late yesterday, said the unabated violence in Mogadishu showed the need for quick deployment.

The AU's peace and security council approved a 7,650-strong force, just minutes before attackers struck Mogadishu's hilltop Villa Somalia with five mortars after dark yesterday.

President Abdullahi Yusuf, who moved there after the recent ousting of Islamists who had controlled most of south Somalia for six months, was inside but unhurt, government sources said.

''This shows the need for deployment as soon as possible,'' AU peace and security commissioner Said Djinnit said after the formal approval of a six-month peacekeeping mission.

Many doubt the AU's capacity to muster such a force, let alone tame Somalia. It has been in chaos since the 1991 ousting of a dictator and defied US and UN peacekeepers in the early 1990s in a mission shown in the ''Black Hawk Down'' film.

Only Uganda has publicly vowed to supply troops. But Djinnit said a second, unnamed country had also pledged to contribute, meaning the first three of nine planned 850-soldier AU battalions could go in ''within weeks''.

The AU, whose peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region have failed to halt the conflict there, wants the United Nations to take over after six months. But it is not at all clear whether the world body's members want to take on such a mission.

ISLAMISTS Suspicion for the Mogadishu attacks has fallen squarely on the Islamists. They have repeatedly vowed to hit back with guerrilla tactics after their surprisingly quick defeat by government-Ethiopian forces over Christmas and the New Year.

Scattered to remote parts of the south near the border with Kenya, some Islamists have begun returning to Mogadishu in disguise, according to sources in the movement.

Yusuf, 72, arrived in Mogadishu just days ago to take up residence in the bullet- and rocket-scarred building that used to house former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Facing multiple threats from the Islamists, returning warlords, clan rivalries and the prevalence of guns, the government has a momentous challenge to impose order.

Set up at a peace conference in Kenya in 2004, the government's mandate runs out in 2009. It has international support from the UN, United States and others, but lacks a genuinely popular power base inside Somalia.

Diplomats fear a dangerous vacuum once Ethiopian troops propping up the government return home. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said he wants to withdraw them within days, adding urgency to the diplomatic push to create a peacekeeping mission.

REUTERS MS HT1800