Clashes between government troops and Islamist insurgents have displaced more than 55,000 people from Mogadishu since the beginning of February, with many of them heading out of Somalia to neighbouring Kenya, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

A radio reporter jailed for a week in Kismayo, was released, but he was expelled from the town and told not to come back, according to a statement from the Alshabab authorities. According to The statement journalist Mohamed Salad Abdulle, working for independent broadcaster Somali Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) was released but the Alshabab court has ordered him to leave the town with in 36 hours and told him not to return.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is deeply concerned about the security and safety of journalists in Somalia following the detention of Mohamed Salad Abdulle, of Somali Broadcasting Corporation and correspondent of Markabley radio in Kismayo and Mohamed Abdikarim, a correspondent with Hornafrik and Markabley radio station. The two were arrested on Tuesday 16 March 2010 by the Al Shabaab Administration in Jubba and Gedo regions.

The death toll from two days of fighting in Somalia’s capital between government forces and al Shabaab rebels has risen to 54, ambulance services said as clashes subsided with both sides claiming successes.

Al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist opposition group, has announced it will stop World Food Programme (WFP) operations in Somalia. The armed group said on Sunday that food distributed by the UN agency had disadvantaged local farmers and accused the WFP of being politically motivated.

More than a dozen people were killed and many more were hurt when two clans clashed in central Somalia, residents and community elders said on Friday. The Qubeys clan and the Suleyman sub-clan of the Habargidir clan started fighting the previous day in Amara village, 90 km north of the pirate base town of Haradheeere. The fight was over a dispute over land ownership.

About a year ago, Muqtar Ali's brother was shot dead by gunmen in the busy Bakara market of Somalia's capital Mogadishu, and his $200 in cash was stolen. Ali says that if a new mobile money transfer service unveiled by Somalia's biggest mobile telecoms firm last month had been in place then, his brother would still be alive.

Reporters Without Borders joins its partner organisation in Somalia, the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), in expressing deep concern about the fate of Ali Yusuf Adan, a journalist who was arrested on 21 February in an area controlled by the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab.

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia expressed grave concern today at the latest spike in violence in the capital, Mogadishu, which has killed at least 80 civilians and forced more than 8,000 others to flee their homes since the start of the month.

The US has imposed impossible conditions on aid agencies in Somalia, a UN envoy to the country says. Humanitarian co-ordinator Mark Bowden said the US was trying to ensure that aid was not diverted to Islamist insurgents fighting the government.

Despite fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Mogadishu, health workers have fanned out across the war-torn capital of Somalia in a three-month United Nations-backed campaign that has immunized nearly 300,000 women of child-bearing age and 288,000 children.

Clashes between government forces and the Al-Shabaab militia in the Somali capital Mogadishu are displacing thousands of civilians. Reportedly, some 24 civilians have been killed and another 40 injured in the latest fighting, which erupted on Wednesday.

The United Nations refugee agency has reported that a sharp rise in violence in Somalia in January left nearly 260 civilians dead, in addition to uprooting over 80,000 and causing widespread destruction. According to local sources, intense clashes between Government forces and militia groups fighting in the strife-torn central regions have also left 253 civilians wounded.

Djibouti has announced to send 450 troops to Somalia next month as to join the African Union peacekeepers mission in that country, the foreign ministry said.

Fighting between Islamist insurgents and African Union peacekeepers that started late on Thursday and continued into Friday killed at least 12 people in Somalia's capital, health services and witnesses said.

Amnesty International has called for much stricter controls for the military assistance being given to Somalia's transitional government. The human rights group says weapons are all too often being used against civilians or they end up in the hands of groups opposed to the government.

Fighting in central Somalia has killed at least 138 people and displaced 63,000 others in the last two weeks, a rights group said on Friday. Hizbul Islam and its rival, al Shabaab -- branded by Washington as an al Qaeda proxy in the region -- want to impose a strict version of Islamic sharia law in the Horn of Africa nation that has had no functional central government since 1991.

The United Nations refugee agency has warned that many parts of central Somalia are witnessing a surge in fighting, sparking growing displacement and worsening the plight of an already beleaguered population.

Fighting between pro-government militias and the Al-Shabaab rebel group has caused continuing death and displacement in central Somalia. Clashes concentrated in the areas of Wabho, Warhole, and Beladweyne killed 27 civilians and displaced some 250 pastoralist families, according to rights groups in Somalia cited by Reuters on 12 January.

At least 20 civilians were killed on Thursday evening and 40 others wounded after mortars and artillery shells hit the capital Mogadishu, according to eye witnesses' account. The deadly clashes erupted after Islamist insurgents fired at the presidency building, residents told AfricaNews.