Mogadishu, September 02, 2006 – HARDLINE Somali Islamists overnight banned all trade and public transportation during prayer times in areas under their control, fuelling fears of a Taliban-style takeover of the lawless nation.

A day ahead of a second round of peace talks with Somalia's weak government in Sudan, Muslim clerics ordered all businesses to close during the five-times daily prayers under threat of severe punishment from Sharia law courts.

The move tightens the enforcement of strict Islamic law in much of southern Somalia, further challenging the transitional government's limited authority and is likely to exacerbate strains at the Arab League-mediated talks.

"The courts have banned business and public transport during prayer time," said Sheikh Mowliid Ahmed, who chairs the Islamic court in northern Mogadishu's Siinay district. "This is religious obligation and we have to implement it."

"If a community is Islamic and the country is Islamic, anyone who fails to abide by the order must be punished," he said after Friday prayers. "We will use force to enforce this and we will not hesitate to do so."

Islamic court officials and residents of the town of Jowhar, about 90 km north of Mogadishu, said similar restrictions had gone into effect and were being enforced by heavily armed Muslim militia.

"Everybody must leave his business and go for prayer when the muezzin is heard," said Sheikh Mohamed Mohamoud, Jowhar's deputy security chief. "Anybody who does not obey will face painful punishment."

The new regulations appear to mirror the fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law adopted by the Taliban in Afghanistan and follow a July edict that Muslims who do not perform daily prayers may be punished by death.

It is not clear if anyone has yet been condemned to die under that ruling but the Islamists have tightened their enforcement of Sharia since seizing the capital in June from secular warlords and expanding their territory.

Muslim militia have presided over the public executions of at least two convicted murderers, the flogging of more than a dozen people, including two women, for drug offences, and have forcibly closed cinemas and photo shops.

They have also banned live music at wedding receptions and other events and have harassed civilians, mainly women, for failing to wear appropriate dress in public.

US and other western officials have expressed concern about a "creeping Talibanisation" in Somalia at the hands of the Islamists, some of whom are accused of links with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

The Islamists flatly reject the charges, but have vowed to impose strict Sharia law across the largely Muslim Horn of Africa nation of some 10 million that has been without a functioning central authority for the last 16 years.

Source: Agence France-Presse