Somalia's parliament speaker yesterday asked neighbouring countries to urgently deploy troops to prop up the wobbly government as thousands fled the capital amid a mounting rebel onslaught.
Hardline Islamist insurgents, on an offensive since May 7 to oust a UN-backed transitional government led by Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, this week stepped up attacks and killed three senior government officials on successive days.
"The government is weakened by the rebel forces. We ask neighbouring countries - including Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Yemen - to send troops to Somalia within 24 hours," parliament speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur told reporters.
"We have a state of emergency in this country today because foreign fighters from all over the world are fighting the government," said Nur, adding that an Al-Qaeda operative from Pakistan was commanding the fighting in Mogadishu.
"We have taken this decision after seeing the emerging threats from foreign fighters," he said.
Nur said a Pakistani Al-Qaeda commander was based in a district near the presidential palace.
"We need neighbouring countries to protect... Somalia. Otherwise the trouble caused by these foreign fighters will spill to all the corners of the region," he added.
Ethiopian troops who rolled into Somalia in late 2006 to buttress an embattled transitional government against insurgents, pulled early this year. Three high-profile officials, including a security minister, have been killed in as many days last week.
Early yesterday, fighting erupted in Hamarweh, a suburb near the presidential palace. But loyalist forces repelled the rebels, according to information minister.
"We have pushed them back and we are in full control of the contested areas," minister Farhan Ali Mohamoud told reporters.
Residents said Islamist forces had just been about three kilometres away from Sharif's palace which is protected by hundreds of African Union peacekeepers.
Deployed in March 2007, the force counts more than 4,300 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers.
It protects strategic sites in the seaside capital such as the presidency, the port and the airport, but cannot fight alongside government forces and is authorised to retaliate only in case of a direct attack.