Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed has claimed his military had defeated Islamist rebels battling to overthrow his Western-backed government after the al Shabaab group began withdrawing fighters from the capital Mogadishu.
Rejecting Mr Ahmed's claim to have quashed al Shabaab's four-year insurgency, the militants' spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, said their retreat was tactical only and they were holding their positions elsewhere in the anarchic country.
A 9,000-strong African peacekeeping force and Somali government forces had been steadily wresting control of rubble-strewn Mogadishu from the militants this year. Al Shabaab's pullout followed a string of fierce gun battles late on Friday.
Somalia has been without effective central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre 20 years ago.
The conflict has hampered aid efforts in the famine-hit country, with the militia barring some aid agencies from central and southern areas it controls.
Al Shabaab's retreat from the Somali capital Mogadishu signals an acceptance it cannot militarily defeat a government propped up by foreign muscle and firepower, but raises the spectre of an escalation in al-Qaeda-inspired raids.
President Ahmed urged those who had fled their homes not to rush back to the city neighbourhoods now empty of militants until they had been cleared of explosives.
The government said the rebels had retreated as far as 100 km from the capital.
‘The Somali government welcomes the success attained by the Somali government forces backed by AMISOM who defeated the enemy of al Shabaab,’ Mr Ahmed told a news conference at his residence.
Al Shabaab has never previously entirely left Mogadishu, raising questions over whether deep rifts among the al Qaeda-affiliated group's senior commanders had finally led to a split.
One faction prefers a more nationalist Somali agenda and wants to impose a harsh Islamic programme on the nation. Another more international wing aims to promote Jihad (holy war) and is bent on overthrowing a government they see as a Western stooge as well as forging closer ties with regional al-Qaeda cells.
