MOGADISHU, 30 December 2006 — Somalia’s Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi drove triumphantly into Mogadishu yesterday, claiming total victory over rival Islamists and stressing that his Ethiopian military allies would stay as long as needed.

Gedi returned in an armed convoy one day after government forces and Ethiopian troops had forced Islamist leaders to abandon the coastal capital they had controlled for six months.

“Most of the Islamists were destroyed by our forces... the Islamic courts do not exist any more,” Gedi told reporters, adding that their defeat had curbed the expansion of terrorism in Africa.

Ethiopia has fought two territorial wars with Somalia and the role of the Ethiopian military in helping drive out the Islamists has been a contentious one, but Gedi stressed that there would be no immediate withdrawal.

“The Ethiopian (forces) will stay as long as needed by the transitional federal government... The stabilization of Somalia is needed for the stability of our neighbors,” he said.

The African Union has called for the Ethiopian troops to pull out immediately and, even as Gedi drove into Mogadishu, there was large-scale protest in the northern part of the capital with demonstrators throwing stones, burning tires and calling for the foreign troops to leave. Gedi’s weak government, which relied heavily on the Ethiopian military to secure its victory over the Islamists in nine days of heavy fighting, has announced plans to impose three months of martial law to restore order.

Looting and gunbattles had erupted in Mogadishu on Thursday between rival clan-based militias after the Islamists — including the movement’s leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys — withdrew to their last stronghold in Kismayo port.

“This country has been through a lot of anarchy, so to reestablish order we will have to use an iron fist, especially with the private militia,” Gedi said.

The Ethiopian intervention in Somalia has received tacit US support, with Washington arguing that Addis Ababa had legitimate security concerns about the possibility of Islamists with Al-Qaeda links gaining control of the country.

Even before the rise of the Islamists, Gedi’s government had been kept out of Mogadishu by clan violence. There was an attempt on his life during a rare trip to the city in November, 2005.

He called for the international community to provide both humanitarian and technical support and for the United States to help “rid terrorism from the region.” He said the government will move to the capital when it is safe.

Gedi said victory over the Islamists had opened “the path for a new future for us to prevent any attempt of terrorism and to reverse the expansion of terrorism in the whole of Africa.” But Islamist fighters still held Kismayo, where their local commander, Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilalone, vowed they would launch guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks across Somalia.

“We will never surrender to Ethiopians,” he told AFP. “I assure you the Islamic forces are everywhere in the country and you will see the forces operating within days. What we will do is hit and run. We will ambush their convoys everywhere in Somalia.”

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the executive leader of the Council of Islamic Courts, the umbrella group for the Islamic movement, was defiant. “We will not run away from our enemies. We will never depart from Somalia. We will stay in our homeland,” he said from Kismayo.

An AFP correspondent saw Ethiopian tanks, more than 70 military trucks and hundreds of troops near Banadir Hospital in southern Mogadishu. Hundreds more vehicles were parked at the northern and western gates of the city.

Somalia disintegrated into lawlessness after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. It was carved up among clan warlords, some of whom now back the government, and defied all international bids to restore order.

There have been no independent assessments of casualties but Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi claimed up to 3,000 dead on the side of the Islamists, while the Islamists said they had killed hundreds of government troops. The UN World Food Program said it was resuming humanitarian air operations to Somalia after the government lifted a ban on flights.