MOGADISHU, SOMALIA — Clashes between Islamic fighters and Ethiopian-backed government soldiers heightened fears Wednesday that Somalia is inching toward a civil war that could drag in the entire Horn of Africa.
As international negotiators worked furiously to resolve the dispute, armed battles around Somalia's transitional capital of Baidoa killed at least one government soldier, according to Somali officials.
Islamic leaders, who seized control of Mogadishu, the traditional capital, and much of southern Somalia from warlords this summer, are calling for a "holy war" against Christian-dominated Ethiopia unless the neighboring nation withdraws its troops, which were sent across the border to prop up Somalia's weak transitional government.
Both sides have been massing weapons and troops in strategic points around southern Somalia in recent weeks.
It remained unclear who started Wednesday's fighting, but officials said skirmishes were ignited by a gunfight between two rival reconnaissance missions in the town of Idale, about 40 miles southwest of Baidoa, where Somalia's transitional government is based. Fighting spread to two other areas.
"We captured two technical vehicles [converted 4x4s with mounted heavy guns], killed nine soldiers from their side and have prisoners in hand," said Mohammed Ibrahim Bilal, a senior Islamist military official, speaking via telephone from the front line. "In the coming hours, Baidoa will be under our control. We will clean Ethiopians from our soil."
The transitional government's assistant defense minister, Salad Ali Jelle, said only one of his forces' soldiers was killed.
Islamic Courts Union leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys shed his usual religious robes for military fatigues Wednesday and spent much of the day monitoring the fighting, witnesses said. But by Wednesday evening, after meeting with European Union negotiators, he downplayed the skirmishes.
"The war has not started," he told reporters. "Fighting is happening, but it is not between Islamic courts and the government. It's between Islamic courts and Ethiopian invaders."
The Islamic Courts Union is an alliance of religious leaders and their militias that formed to restore order to Somalia. The country has been beset with internecine fighting between warlords since the 1991 collapse of the Mohamed Siad Barre regime, the country's last functioning government.
