4 Bodies Found After Ethiopian Troops Leave Positions in Mogadishu

Four decomposed bodies were found in a street on the north of the Bakara market in Mogadishu where Ethiopian troops withdrew Sunday, a week after the troops came to the street as part of the transitional Somali government's security sweep in Bakara market, witnesses said.

Residents, who returned to their homes to check on them, helped bury the corpses near the place where they were found.

"We found the bodies in different locations after we returned to take out our remaining belongings," Farah Bile, a resident told Xinhua.

It is not known whether the four dead people, who were all unidentified males, were insurgent fighters killed by Ethiopian troops or civilians caught in the cross fighting between Islamist fighters and Ethiopian soldiers.

Residents fled their homes following the arrival of the Ethiopian troops in their neighborhood early last week when government troops and Ethiopian soldiers carried out security crack down on insurgents.

Government officials say the largest market in Somalia has became a hideout for insurgents and accused traders at the market of financing the Islamist fighters.

Somali government police force were deployed in and around the Bakara market since Thursday. The police were brought in to set up police stations to help secure the market, a move opposed by traders and Hawiye clan elders who argue that "Mogadishu and Bakara market require political reconciliation rather than police deployment."

Islamist fighters have been waging guerilla attacks on Somali government troops and officials and Ethiopian troops since December 2006 when joint Ethiopian and Somali troops ousted an Islamist movement that controlled south and central Somalia including the capital Mogadishu.