BAIDOA (Somalia), Dec 24 Ethiopian planes dropped bombs and fired missiles on two locations in Somalia on Sunday, witnesses said, as fighting between Somali Islamists and their Ethiopian-allied rivals raged for a sixth day.

There was no immediate word from Ethiopia, which has said it would make public any intention of war against the Islamists, or from the Somali interim government.

Resident Abdirashid Hassan said he saw planes drop bombs on the outskirts of Baladwayne, 300 km north of the capital Mogadishu. “The Ethiopians have started bombing,” he said by telephone.

Another witness, businessman Farah Osman, said two Ethiopian planes fired missiles on the outskirts of Bandiradley, 700 km north of Mogadishu.

A senior Islamist, Sheikh Mahmud Ibrahim Suley, accused the Ethiopians of using MiG warplanes and helicopters against Islamist positions.

“Today the war is being fought by land and air,” he told reporters in Mogadishu, adding that Islamists had destroyed five Ethiopian tanks. He did not comment on casualties.

If confirmed, the use of foreign attack aircraft would ratchet up tensions in what is already the most sustained combat yet between the Islamists and Ethiopia-backed government, marooned in the south-central trading outpost Baidoa.

Both sides say they have killed hundreds since the fighting began on Tuesday, although aid agencies report dozens of dead.

The Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) captured Mogadishu and a swathe of southern Somalia in June, challenging the Western-backed interim government's aim to restore central rule for the first time since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.

Fighters loyal to both sides started firing shells, rockets and machine guns at each other shortly after dawn on Sunday, witnesses said, in battles that spread to four fronts.

“Fighting is going on from one part of the country to the other. The Islamic Courts have ignited the war they promised yesterday,” Information Minister Ali Ahmed Jama “Jangali” said. “They will lose in this fighting.”

An Islamist fighter speaking from close to the semi-autonomous Puntland region, home of interim President Abdullahi Yusuf, said: “Now there is a full-blown war.”

Fighting was reported near Daynunay, the government’s forward military base about 20 km southeast of Baidoa.—Reuters