Somali radical Islamists capture port town

A radical Islamic group has seized another Somali port town, consolidating its control over a southwestern region that borders the Somali capital.

A radical Islamic group has seized another Somali port town, consolidating its control over a southwestern region that borders the Somali capital.

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Amin Adan, a resident of the port town of Barawe, said that fighters of al-Shabab took control on Saturday without a fight because the government's allies left as soon as they heard the fighters were on their way.

"We don't know whether it is a tactical retreat," Adan told The Associated Press by phone from Barawe, 180 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu. Barawe is near Merka, a key port town with an airstrip that al-Shabab seized earlier this week; both are in the region of Lower Shabelle, which surrounds Mogadishu.

The steady and seemingly uncontested rise in recent months of al-Shabab -- meaning The Youth -- which the United States considers a terrorist organization, is a far cry from the situation in late 2006, when Somalia's UN-backed government rolled into Mogadishu supported by powerful Ethiopian troops and drove out radical Islamists intent on ruling by strict Shariah law.

The past two years have been a bloodbath as the Islamic fighters launched a vicious insurgency, mainly in Mogadishu, that has killed thousands of civilians and sent an estimated half of the capital's 2 million people fleeing from near-daily roadside bombings and remote-controlled explosions.

In Mogadishu, where the government is still nominally in control, Shabab fighters carry out public punishments such as lashings and stonings, conduct training exercises and present themselves as an alternative government.