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Hundreds were fleeing the clashes on Saturday, the first since several former warlords staked rival claims on the lucrative port and fertile hinterlands in May.
Gunmen from the Ras Kamboni armed group of Ahmed Madobe, recently self-appointed “president” of the southern Jubaland region, battled against forces loyal to Iftin Hassan Basto, another leader claiming to be president.
“Fighting started when soldiers from Ras Kamboni attacked and tried to arrest me,” Basto said.
The last rebel stronghold near the strategic town of Qusair, western Syria, has fallen to government forces, Syrian state TV says.
Eastern Bouweida village, which lies between Qusair and the restive city of Homs was captured by troops backed by militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The Syrian army regained control of the town of Qusair on Wednesday after weeks of intense fighting with rebel forces.
The Georgian military says six of its soldiers have been killed in a suicide attack in southern Afghanistan.
General Irakli Dzneladze, chief of the Georgian Army Joint Staff, said during a news conference in Tbilisi that the troops were killed when militants blew up a truck packed with explosives outside their base in restive Helmand Province.
Dzneladze said several soldiers were also injured.
A day after Syrian rebels lost the strategic and symbolic town of Qusair to the Syrian army, they thought they had gained control of the Quneitra crossing into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights Thursday.
Their victory, however, was short-lived as Israeli security sources said Syrian troops took back the crossing after heavy fighting.
Earlier, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a spokesman for the Austrian Defense Ministry reported that rebels had taken the crossing, according to Reuters.
Ten militants were killed and two soldiers wounded as fighting broke out on Wednesday with the Malian army advancing on the rebel-held northern city of Kidal, military officials told AFP.
“We counted 10 dead and have captured 28 prisoners,” said Malian army spokesman Souleymane Maiga after troops engaged the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, which has occupied Kidal since January.
After three weeks of fighting between Assad’s troops backed by Hezbollah fighters and Syrian rebels, the strategic town of Qusair, located along Lebanese border, was taken control of by Syrian Army on Wednesday, said Syrian state TV.
Syria’s Sana state news agency declared that “heroic armed forces have returned security and stability to all of the town”, quoted the BBC.
“The Syrian army totally controls the Qusayr region in Homs province after killing a large number of terrorists and capturing others,” said the state TV, using the term of terrorists for rebels.
Malian troops were preparing Tuesday to re-take a key regional capital occupied by Tuareg separatist rebels who have refused to allow the entry of the country’s army or government ahead of nationwide elections.
Troops have been mobilised in four “battle groups” to enter the northern city of Kidal and “close in around” the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), an armed group formed by separatists from the country’s Tuareg minority, army spokesman Souleymane Maiga told AFP.
The move came after a suicide bomber blew himself up at the house of an MNLA commander in Kidal, the scene of a number of attacks since it was occupied by Islamist militants and then the MNLA after a miliary coup last year.