Hardline Somali leader 'elected'

A hardline Islamist has claimed leadership of Somalia's opposition, ousting a more moderate rival.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed had been voted out because he had attended UN-sponsored peace talks in Djibouti last month.

He also criticised Mr Ahmed for agreeing to a ceasefire with the Ethiopian-backed Somali government.

A spokesman for Mr Ahmed dismissed the move and described the vote as "null and void".

Mr Aweys takes over as head of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), which is based in Eritrea.

"Now I Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys am the chairman of the executive committee as well as the general head," he told Reuters news agency.

Mr Aweys is the founder of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) that ruled much of Somalia in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian forces backed by Somali government troops.

Humanitarian crisis

Somalia's interim government and some members of the ARS - including Mr Ahmed - signed a deal in Djibouti calling for the deployment of UN peacekeepers and agreeing to a ceasefire after a month.

Mr Aweys and other hardline Islamists rejected the pact, which has had no apparent effect in alleviating the continuing violence.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the current fighting threatens to wreck all efforts to resolve a humanitarian emergency that could soon rival Somalia's famine in the early 1990s.

According to one estimate, more than 8,000 civilians have been killed and one million forced from their homes since the start of last year by fighting between the interim government and Islamist insurgents.

Somalia has experienced almost constant civil conflict since the collapse of Mohamed Siad Barre's regime in January 1991.

Successive droughts have left an estimated 2.5 million in need of food aid.

The UN expects that figure to rise sharply if droughts and insecurity continue.