Mogadishu , November 01 2006 - Islamist and Somali government forces girding for battle in central Somalia fired artillery and rockets into the air on Wednesday, sending hundreds of villagers fleeing for safety, witnesses said.

With peace talks in Khartoum on the verge of collapse and fears rising for an all-out war that could engulf the Horn of Africa, the two sides conducted live-fire exercises near the government seat of Baidoa, they said.

The witnesses said the barrages shook the ground but caused no casualties in a 20km no-man's land between the towns of Deynunay and Burhakaba, here the rival camps are dug in in an increasingly tense standoff.

"People in Burkahaba have started to flee," town resident Osman Ibrahim Adan said by phone. "They have gone to Mogadishu because they fear war can start any moment."

He and others said Islamist forces camped in the nearby village of Moote-Moote had launched artillery and anti-aircraft fire into the air in response to a similar barrage from government-held Deynunay.

"They fired more heavy anti-aircraft shells and we don't know if they are intending to attack the government bases," Adan said.

The government said its troops in Deynunay, about 22km east of Baidoa, had fired missiles and artillery in a demonstration of strength to deter a feared Islamist attack.

"It was part of military exercises in the front-line areas," commander Abdillahi Barre Nur told AFP from Baidoa, about 250km north-east of the Islamists' main base in Mogadishu.

"We are showing that our forces are ready to break the silence if the Islamic militias try to violate the territories we control," he said.

The firing came as diplomats huddled in the Sudanese capital in a desperate bid to salvage the peace talks and avert a full-scale war that could embroil the region, possibly drawing in arch-foe neighbors Ethiopia and Eritrea. –

Source: Sapa-AFP

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