Government troops move into capital

Many fear Islamists and radicals will set up an insurgency.
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Government troops and allied forces from neighboring Ethiopia swept into Mogadishu on Thursday without firing a shot after Islamic militants abandoned Somalia's capital.
Once considered unbeatable, the Council of Islamic Courts was left holding only a small pocket of territory around the southern port city of Kismayo. Only days earlier, the militants had controlled much of Somalia.
But the routing of the loose alliance of Islamic militants after only a week of fighting did not mean an end to the years of war and suffering that have racked the impoverished country of 9 million in the Horn of Africa.
There were grave fears that hard-core Somali Islamists, bolstered by foreign radicals, would fight a guerrilla insurgency against Somalia's Western-backed interim federal government and its protectors from Ethiopia, a country with a population divided between Christians and Muslims.
Moreover, even as Somali government and Ethiopian troops moved into Mogadishu, gunmen from rival clans that had fought over the city for years before the Islamists drove them out began reappearing in the streets.
Government and Ethiopian forces entered Mogadishu unopposed Thursday afternoon from the north, while a second column moving from the south halted short of the city's boundaries.
Ethiopia had said that its troops wouldn't move into Mogadishu. It apparently changed its mind after Council of Islamic Courts leaders and fighters fled the city southward toward Kismayo.
In the power vacuum, shots echoed around the city and gunmen robbed shops and held up civilians. Looters stripped offices that the militants had abandoned. At least three civilians were reported killed and more than 10 injured.
"We will not let Mogadishu burn," Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in Addis Ababa.