Ethiopian tanks rumbled south from Mogadishu to attack Somali Islamists today after the religious movement's leaders called on their fighters to take a stand in the port city of Kismayu.
Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, whose forces fled the Somali capital on Thursday, also urged thousands of residents gathered at a Kismayu stadium for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha to defend their country and faith from government troops backed by armour, soldiers and jet fighter planes from mostly Christian Ethiopia.
"Our country is under occupation so we have decided to fight," he told the crowd as Islamist troops on trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns stood guard outside.
Ahmed said his Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) remained ready to negotiate with the interim government, but that the Ethiopian soldiers backing it must leave.
He said the Courts were set up to restore stability in a nation that has been mired in anarchy, torn to pieces and squabbled over by warlords since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
"But now we are gearing up to kick these occupiers out of our country," the SICC chairman said.
Islamist troops abandoned the coastal capital they had ruled by sharia law for six months on Thursday in the face of a 10-day Ethiopian offensive of land and air assaults.
Crowning the dramatic reversal, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi swept into Mogadishu yesterday saying the fight for political survival had been won.
Today, President Abdullahi Yusuf landed in an Ethiopian army helicopter about 20 km (12 miles) outside Mogadishu and held talks with faction leaders and elders.
"This government has a duty to return peace," he told reporters at a run-down military camp. "The whole country has become people and guns... We have passed 15 years of civil war. We now need to forgive each other and hold hands."
Sitting on a plastic chair under a large thorn tree, Yusuf said he would not enter the capital this time and would return to the government's base in the provincial town of Baidoa.
"I will come to Mogadishu once everything is in place."