Somalia: 12 die as rival Islamist groups fight

Fighting between rival Islamist factions on Thursday over control of a key Somali port city killed at least 12 people, most of them combatants, said witnesses and medical staff.

The fighting is the first concrete sign of a major split in the Islamist alliance that poses the main threat to Somalia's fragile U.N.-backed government.

The fighting broke out early Thursday morning in five areas of Kismayo, a port that is Somalia's third largest town and the stronghold for two powerful militant groups.

Residents said late Thursday that battles between al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, which means "Islamic Party," had almost ended, with al-Shabab appearing to be in control of much of Kismayo.

Osman Jibril, a nurse at Kismayo Hospital, said the death toll had risen to 12 and the that more than 70 wounded people had been admitted to the hospital. He said 10 of the dead were combatants and most of the wounded were also fighters.

Kismayo resident Abdinasir Igal said al-Shabab militiamen patrolled the town center after the battle, shouting from their vehicles that residents should remain calm.

Sheik Abdullahi Dahir, who lives in the northern part of Kismayo, said many fighters of the Islamic Party had converged in that part of town. Sporadic gunfire could be heard there late Thursday, said Dahir, who saw some of the fighting from the rooftop of his two-level house.

Sheik Ismail Adow, a spokesman for the Islamic Party, said the clashes began when his fighters came under attack by members of al-Shabab.

Kismayo is around 310 miles (500 kilometers) south of the capital of Mogadishu and taxes collected from shipping are a major revenue source for Islamic militants.

An al-Shabab spokesman, Sheik Ali Mohamoud Rage, said his group was not targeting the Islamic Party but one of its top commanders in southern Somalia, he said, "who opposes jihad in Somalia."

Last month, members of al-Shabab vowed allegiance to al-Qaida. The Somali group has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization.

Al-Shabab and the Islamic Party used to jointly control Kismayo but last week al-Shabab declared themselves the sole administrators. The two sides began swapping insults in the local media and massing fighters on the outskirts of town.

Information Minister Dahir Mohamoud Geelle said the apparent split within the Islamic alliance did not benefit the government.

"Their division is meaningless to the government because fighting between them can only cause the loss of civilian lives," Geelle told The Associated Press.

Somalia's government, which itself suffers from splits and defections, only controls a few blocks of Mogadishu with the help of around 5,000 African Union peacekeepers. Al-Shabab launched a suicide attack on the peacekeepers earlier this month, killing 21 people.

But the quarrel between the two Islamist factions could easily spread to other areas under their control in southern Somalia, prolonging a hopelessly brutal civil war that has already lasted 18 years.

Somalia is plagued by deadly rivalries between clans, which set up their own militias after the 1991 overthrow of socialist dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The Islamist movement originally emerged in 2006 as way of providing order to the chaotic country through a series of community-based Islamic courts. But foreign intervention chased the Islamists from power and they have been fighting a bloody insurgency ever since.

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Associated Press writer Salad Duhul contributed to this report.