MOGADISHU, Aug 1: Six more Somali government ministers resigned on Tuesday, citing the 18-month-old administration’s “unpopularity”, as hardline Islamists widened their control in the centre of the shattered nation, officials said.

The resignations of Culture Minister Abdi Hashi Abdullahi, Water and Natural Resources Minister Muhamoud Salat Nur and four assistant ministers brought to 24 the number of ministers who have quit the 102-member cabinet.

The move came two days after Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi survived a motion of no confidence.

“Gedi’s government is unpopular among most members of parliament, and its work plans will not be accepted by the national assembly,” Nur told AFP.

Abdullahi said the resignations, which plunge the government into fresh turmoil, were “based on the interest of the nation.”

Analysts said the resignations aimed to put exert pressure on the premier to reshuffle his cabinet or step down.

On Friday, gunmen shot and killed the constitutional affairs minister, a day after 18 others had stepped down in protest over the deployment of Ethiopian troops to protect the fragile government from a feared attack by militiamen loyal to the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).

Nearly 1,000 people demonstrated in the south-central town of Baidoa, the seat of government, to condemn the killing, which Gedi blamed on terrorism.

“The killing of the minister was the work of international terrorism. Several people have been arrested ... and investigations are continuing,” President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed told the crowd.

Officials said 10 people were arrested as the government appealed for civilians to start returning arms.

After the government watched helplessly as a powerful Islamic militia seized the capital Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia, the Islamists renewed their opposition to Arab League-mediated peace talks, scheduled to resume on Wednesday in Khartoum, unless the Ethiopian troops withdraw.

Some hardline elements have declared a holy war against Addis Ababa as imams have stepped up jihadist rhetoric.

The deployment has split the country, with the United Nations, the United States and other Western countries warning that any interference by Somalia’s neighbours — arch-foes Ethiopia and Eritrea — might scupper efforts to achieve lasting peace in the country.

As the government unravelled, militiamen from the dominant Hawiye clan handed over at least 50 battlewagons — pickups mounted with machineguns — to the SICS.

“We came here by the wishes of the locals, not by force,” said SICS head Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a hardline cleric designated a terrorist by the United States for suspected links to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

Local leaders said they would back the Islamists, whose growing influence has threatened the authority of the transitional government, in their efforts to entrench theocracy in the country, home to about 10 million people.

The transitional government in Baidoa, formed in Kenya in late 2004 after more than two years of peace talks, was seen as the best chance for the lawless nation to set up a functioning administration since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Since then more than 14 internationally backed initiatives have failed to produce a government, with analysts blaming unruly warlords who obtained arms and other forms of support from neighbouring countries despite a UN arms embargo. —AFP