Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said he believed the
militants have vacated 90 per cent of their positions in the
war-torn city.
However, a spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force said the
militants had blended into the civilian population, making them even harder
to fight.
The group, which is linked to al-Qaeda, insisted it was merely a tactical
withdrawal to launch a counterattack.
"We shall fight the enemy wherever they are," al-Shabab spokesman
Ali Mohamed Rage told a local radio station.
Al-Shabaab's leadership is understood to have held a high-level meeting late
last week, when its top commanders fell out regarding how to continue
holding the city.
Fees extorted from businesses have dried up as traders desert the city's main
Bakara market for the Hamarweyne area, which is under the control of the
internationally-backed transitional government. Other income from farmers in
rural areas had also been badly hit by a lack of harvest due to drought,
sources in Mogadishu said.
This meant that the organisation was struggling to maintain its grip on
Mogadishu, and had decided to pull back to reorganise.
It is though two moderate al-Shabaab leaders, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and
Abu Mansur, could soon create a rival faction drawing on local commanders.
Ali said the government wants to send security forces into the new areas
vacated by the al-Qaeda-linked militants, describing the withdrawal as the "first
phase of the new war."
Al-Shabab fighters have blocked many aid organisations from the south and have
complicated efforts to help those in Mogadishu. More than 29,000 children
under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in the country's south
alone, according to U.S. estimates.
Residents reported al-Shabab militia leaving their positions overnight but it
was not clear if they had left the city. Since it was born from the ruins of
another radical Islamist group in 2007, al-Shabab has never abandoned
Mogadishu entirely.
Mohammed Ali said he saw about 150 al-Shabab fighters leaving the northwest
part of the capital. He said they may have left town due to a lack of
finances and disagreements between top leaders, explaining that he had an
insight into the militia because "our brothers are that side."
Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the 9,000 African Union peacekeeping
forces in Mogadishu, said the al-Shabab has melted into the population and
will become more difficult to deal with.
"We need more troops now than ever before the area has become too big
for the force to cover," Ankunda said.
Sodio Omar Hassan, who was seeking treatment for her child's malaria at a
hospital set up by African Union peacekeepers, said people are angry at
al-Shabab's response to the relief effort.
She said militia groups declined to grant the UN permission to distribute
maize and cooking oil in a territory it controls.
"People are angry now they are dying," she said. "They
(al-Shabab) don't bring us anything."
More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate
food aid but the crisis has been exacerbated by al-Shabaab's unwillingness
to allow many aid organisations into the areas it controls, saying it is
better to starve than accept help from Western countries. The UN says
640,000 children are acutely malnourished in Somalia, where the UN has
declared five famine zones, including the refugee camps of Mogadishu.
Somalia has been mired in war and anarchy for two decades, and piracy
flourishes off its coastline. In a sign of how desperate the famine has
become, many Somalis have fled from rural areas to Mogadishu, a war zone
where AU peacekeepers have been battling the al-Shabab militants daily.
