On Wednesday, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi called on all sides to stop fighting from his government's headquarters in Baidoa, 150 miles west of Mogadishu. Although his government has U.N. backing, it has so far failed to assert itself outside of Baidoa.

Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, when warlords ousted longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other ¡ª carving this nation of an estimated 8 million people into a patchwork of anarchic, clan-based fiefdoms.

On Wednesday, the Security Council passed a resolution urging all nations to adhere to an existing arms embargo against Somalia and asked U.N. Secretary-General

Kofi Annan to re-establish a monitoring group to investigate violators and make recommendations on how to improve compliance.

Islamic fundamentalists have portrayed themselves as an alternative capable of bringing order and peace to the country, but they have not hesitated to use force and have allegedly linked up with al-Qaida terrorists.

Rumors abound that the United States is backing the alliance. Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed told The Associated Press in an interview last week that he believes the American government is supporting the militia as a way of fighting several top al-Qaida operatives that are being protected by radical clerics.

The United States has said that it had met with a wide variety of Somali leaders in an effort to fight international terrorists in the country.