Somali militants accused the nation’s transitional government of “baseless propaganda” after officials said the rebel group is on the verge of splitting up.

Government forces have seized more areas in the capital of Mogadishu with the help of African Union troops, officials said in a statement.

“These gains come amidst reports that the al-Shabaab’s second in command has withdrawn his forces from the city as rifts within the extremist group deepen in the wake of the failed Ramadan offensive,” a government statement said this week.

The transitional government has expanded the areas it controls in Mogadishu to seven districts that are home to 90 percent of the city’s population, according to the government.

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Somaliland President Ahmed Sillanyo accused the Eritrean government of training and arming Ogaden National Liberation (ONLF) militias then smuggling them to Somaliland so that they would clandestinely cross the border to Ethiopia and wage war there.

President Ahmed Sillanyo condemned the Eritrean government for organizing and sponsoring the landing of ONLF militants on Somaliland soil.

He said the Eritrean government’s action is an act of terrorism, a gross interference in Somaliland’s affair, and a threat to neighboring countries.

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On the night of September 21, 2010, less than a week after hundreds of Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) armed fighters trained by Eritrea trespassed through Somaliland and entered into the Somali Region of Ethiopia (Ogaden), Senior Ethiopian regime officials were in Bole International Airport (Addis Ababa) to receive an “ONLF” delegation led by Salahadin Ma’ow Sh. Abdirahman.

In the coming few days, most likely in the first week of October, the “ONLF” faction that chose peace with Ethiopia will hold conferences inside the Ogaden region. The plan is to organize one such conference in Gari’goan, a place of symbolic value for the ONLF, as it is where its first conference was held after the fall of the Derg regime. This will be followed by a large meeting with the ‘people’ in Kebri-Dahar to brief on the outcomes of the Gari’goan conference.

In June 2010, The Ethiopian regime also signed a peace deal with the United Western Somali Liberation Front (UWSLF), a defunct Islamist front with no armed presence in the region.

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An armed group that signed a power-sharing deal with Somalia’s government has withdrawn from the UN-backed transitional administration, just days after the prime minister quit over a dispute with the president.

Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca (ASWJ), which joined the battle against al-Shabaab and other armed groups seeking to topple the government in March this year, announced on Saturday that it would no longer be part of under fire administration.

Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf, the spokesman for ASWJ, told the Reuters news agency that the government had failed to meet certain agreements reached as part of the power-sharing deal.

“From now on, we as Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca declare that the treaty we have signed with the government in Addis Ababa has ended,” Yusuf said.

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Somaliland and Puntland, once-warring territories in northern Somalia, have unprecedentedly agreed in principle to work together to tackle common security threats.

Troops from both entities have clashed over disputed borderlands in the past. They also differ over the issue of sovereignty: Somaliland unilaterally declared independence in 1991, and Puntland, while asserting a degree of autonomy, recognizes Mogadishu as its own, and Somaliland’s, capital.

“You can’t choose your neighbours, whether it is a region or state; for this reason, from now on, we are going to work with the Puntland state of Somalia, in terms of security of the [Horn of Africa] region,” Somaliland’s Interior Minister, Mohamed Abdi Gabose, said on 26 September in the Somaliland capital, Hargeisa.

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At least 21 people have been killed and scores of others injured in a series of street battles in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, sources say.

Shells fired by African Union (AU) peacekeepers hit Bakara market, in central Mogadishu, during the fighting, Al Jazeera has learned.

“Heavy artillery shelling is ongoing and has left 70 people wounded”, Al Jazeera’s Jama Nur reported from Mogadishu.

Ba-Hoku Baridgye, a spokesman for the AU mission, said one of its soldiers had died in the fighting, while they killed about 25 Somali fighters.

“We killed around 25 Islamist fighters in Hodan and Holwadag districts today and we lost one soldier while two others were injured,” he told AFP.

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Several thousand Somali forces trained in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya will open a second front against Islamist insurgents by year-end in Somalia’s south and central regions, the prime minister said Sunday.

The forces will try to capture key towns including the port of Kismayo, which is believed to generate a substantial amount of revenue for the insurgency, Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke told reporters in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

Kenya has a force of 2,000 Somali refugees stationed in northern Kenya, and Ethiopia trained a force of 1,000 fighters under a German-funded program.

“Those forces have now completed their training and we are expecting them to come back and really now open a different front,” Sharmarke said. “Unless you open different fronts you’re not going to end this war.”

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