ABOUT 300 Ethiopian troops crossed into Somalia yesterday, according to the leader of the country's Islamic militia, who accused the United States of supporting the intervention.
The claim was immediately denied by Ethiopia, but the Islamic Courts Union chairman Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said: "There are Ethiopian troops just past the border and coming in."
Ethiopia, Washington's top counter-terrorism ally in the Horn of Africa
, had backed warlords who have lost control of the capital Mogadishu to the Islamists.
Largely secular Ethiopia has long been wary of the influence of Islam in the region and has fought Islamic forces inside Somalia before. The warlords are widely believed to have been armed by the Ethiopians and financed with US money.
Meanwhile, two Somali warlords defeated by the Islamists fled the capital to a waiting US military ship yesterday, Islamic court sources said.
Bashir Raghe and Muse Sudi Yalahow took a boat early in the morning to a waiting US vessel which approached the Somali coast, and looters wasted no time storming their houses, a senior aide to the Islamist leadership said.
"They said they would be back in a few days, but everybody thinks they may take asylum," said the aide, Abdulrahman Ali Osman. "Everybody is running to their houses to take their guns. Bashir Raghe's house is being looted."
Asked about the report, Commander Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, said he had no information and advised handling the information "with caution".
He said there was a joint taskforce patrolling the region led by Pakistan which included US navy ships.
The Islamists say they have no interest in starting their own government and want talks with the existing administration, but have imposed sharia law wherever they have gone.
In a statement yesterday, the courts said they wanted to set up a police force, an authority to demobilise militias and a new administration "effective and accountable to its people".
They said they can make Mogadishu "sufficiently secure" to host the government, so its plan to bring in foreign peacekeepers is not necessary.
The courts have threatened to end talks with the government if the plan goes forward, and urged the United Nations and African Union to let Somalis settle the situation themselves.
This is the first time Mogadishu has been under the control of a single entity since warlords plunged Somalia into anarchy with the 1991 defeat of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
