"There are 3,500 Islamists hiding in Mogadishu and the surrounding (area) and they are likely to destabilize the security of the city," Interior Minister Hussein Aideed said at a news conference.

Over the past 15 days, troops of Somalia's transitional government and Ethiopian forces routed the Islamic movement, which had controlled most of southern Somalia. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has said he believes major fighting was over. But the Islamic movement has declared it would keep fighting, raising the spectre of an Iraq-style guerrilla war.

Aideed said that there are about 12,000-15,000 Ethiopian troops in Somalia, and when peacekeepers arrive in the country the Ethiopians will leave. Ethiopia has put the number much lower, at around 4,000, and said it would pull out within weeks. A proposed African peacekeeping force has not yet been organized, though diplomatic efforts are under way to get one on the ground.

Ethiopia has promised to withdraw its troops from Somalia as soon as possible, and many Somalis fear that when they do, there will be a power vacuum and even a return to the anarchy and warlord rule of the past.