| MOGADISHU, Tuesday Somalia’s Islamist movement told arch-foe Ethiopia Tuesday to withdraw its troops from the Horn of Africa nation within a week or face war. The Islamists, who dominate most of the south, say Ethiopia has at least 30,000 troops in the country protecting an interim government that is at odds with their movement and controls only the provincial town of Baidoa.  | | Somalis gather around a radio to listen to the news of the growing conflict with Ethiopia outside a tea-shop in Dusa Mareb, Galgaduud province, 50 km (30 miles) east of the Ethiopian border yesterday. Photo/REUTERS . | "Starting today, if the Ethiopians don’t leave our land within seven days, we will attack them and force them to leave our country," Islamist defence chief Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad "Inda’ade" told reporters in Mogadishu. Addis Ababa scoffed at the threat, while the United Nations urged the Islamists not to launch a war that many have been fearing for months and which could spread across the region. "I hope they will not be the beginners of this. They should avoid statements that inflame an already critical situation," UN envoy to Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, said. The Islamists took Mogadishu and a swathe of south Somalia in June, threatening the fragile authority of the interim government of President Abdullahi Yusuf, which is backed by Ethiopia, the West and the United Nations. Diplomats and witnesses say thousands of Ethiopian troops have crossed the border to protect Yusuf’s government in and around Baidoa. But Addis Ababa only acknowledges sending several hundred armed military advisers. "The Islamic Courts are claiming the existence of Ethiopian troops inside of Somalia to attract international attention. Their claim is perceived, it’s not based on fact," Ethiopian Information Ministry spokesman Zemehun Tekele told Reuters. At a news conference, Inda’ade, who is considered a hardliner within the movement and has been given to inflammatory comments in the past, said there were between 30,000 and 35,000 Ethiopian troops in Somalia. That was a much higher figure than most witnesses or independent analysts estimate. Of those, between 6,000 and 8,000 were in Baidoa, he said. Another 1,500 more were at the border of Ethiopia and Kenya with 25 trucks seeking to reach Somalia via another route, he added.
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