At least 11 dead in continuing Somali clashes

In the country's volatile capital Mogadishu a waterfront bomb blast killed at least five civilians, police said. Earlier reports had said the blast was caused by a remotely-detonated device.

Outside the city four Ethiopian soldiers were killed after their base came under rocket and machine-gun attack from Islamists, while the bodies of two more victims of the violence were found at a rubbish dump during the early morning hours.

Police said Islamist gunmen have escalated their campaign of violence since the beginning on July 15 of an EU-backed reconciliation conference in Somalia, with the aim of intimidating the participants.

Observers have warned of the looming possibility of a full-scale guerrilla conflict in Mogadishu, from where up to 10,000 residents have fled in recent weeks.

The United Nations has cautioned against a possible proxy war on Somali soil between arch-foes Ethiopia, which backs the Somali government, and Eritrea, which has been accused of arming the Islamists.

The Islamist militants, remnants of a once-powerful group that ruled much of Somalia for six months last year, have been battling to oust the Ethiopian troops from the country.

A weak transitional government wrested control of Mogadishu from the militants in January, with the aid of the Ethiopian forces who have stayed on to assist in establishing stability and ending 16 years of conflict in Somalia.

The ongoing reconciliation conference brings together 1,000 delegates including international observers, government officials and clan chiefs and seeks to discuss national unity and the road to elections, slated for 2009.

'The meeting is making progress and some clans are close to ending their differences,' said a spokesman for the organizers, Abdurahman Shifte, who added however that the international community was not prepared to pay enough for the conference to be successful.

Reports from conference participants also said however that any lack of progress was also due to the government's inability to quell daily disputes between individual clan chiefs.

Somalia was plunged into anarchy in 1991, after warlords toppled dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and then turned on each other, carving the Horn of Africa country into fiefdoms.