Islamic militants gaining the upper hand in Mogadishu -- UN report

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - Islamist militants have been gaining the upper hand in fighting in Mogadishu and now control roughly 80 percent of the Somali capital, according to a UN Security Council report.

The council panel which monitors the UN arms embargo on Somalia released its report as fresh fighting raged in lawless Mogadishu between Islamist militants and gunmen loyal to a US-backed alliance of warlords.

Both groups are opposed to the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) as a central government.

Machine gun, artillery and rocket fire echoed through the city's streets after a ceasefire called by Islamic courts collapsed, bringing the death toll from the violence since Sunday to at least 53, witnesses said.

The UN report said the warlords alliance had been "severely degraded" by a series of bloody fights with the Islamic militants, who managed to strengthen their hold over large areas formerly held by the warlords.

It said the fundamentalists now control "roughly 80 percent of Mogadishu" and have emerged as a third "ideologically motivated and now independent" force.

The recent Mogadishu fighting pits the fundamentalists against the US-backed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT).

The newly-formed alliance has vowed to curb the growing influence of the Islamic courts that have gained backing by restoring a semblance of stability to areas in Mogadishu by enforcing Sharia (Islamic) law.

The alliance accuses the Islamic courts of harboring terrorists and training foreign fighters on Somali soil, charges that Islamic leaders deny but which have been echoed by the United States and other Western nations.

Washington has declined to explicitly confirm its support for the alliance although US officials have said the group is one of several it is working with to contain the threat of radical Islam in Somalia.

The UN report made it clear that all warring factions -- the TFG, the fundamentalists and the warlord alliance -- are supported by other unnamed states.

"The clandestine support of individual states is narrowly defined and motivated by self-interest," it said. "As a result, the (UN) Monitoring Group sees no end to the trend of continued clandestine state support and, therefore, no end to the ongoing militarization in the near future."

The report said recent battles had highlighted the fundamentalists' "organizational strength, leadership and, importantly, their will."

The Islamic militants were said to be using foreign fighters as well as shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons and to have overrun APRCT territory, killing or capturing alliance militia members.

The UN monitoring group said it had received credible information from multiple reliable sources that the fundamentalists beheaded a number of captured militiamen.

The report said that UN experts believe that the fundamentalists have responded to the fighting and the APRCT by forming "the Council for Uprising and Defending the Religion and the People."

UN experts said all key actors in the Mogadishu fighting were "heavily armed, organized and aggressively keen to protect and ensure the survival of their respective vested interests."

These interests were described as economic, in the case of the warlord-run local administrations and powerful business cartels, or ideological in the case of the fundamentalists.

Secondary actors on the chaotic Somali scene are "feuding sub-clans and pirate groups that are aggressively and, at times, violently, taking advantage of the lack of central authority to pursue criminal activities or attempting to resolve ongoing clan feuds through violent armed confrontations," the report said.

Somalia has been without a functioning central government for nearly 15 years and has been wracked by warlord-fuelled violence since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamad Siad Barre.