By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, The New York Times

NAIROBI, Kenya — Islamist insurgents overpowered Somali government troops on Monday, seizing a strategic town and continuing their steady march across the country.

According to witnesses, several truckloads of Islamist fighters stormed Bulo Burti, a town north of the capital, Mogadishu, and killed eight government soldiers. Government troops then fled, and residents said that government offices, weapons depots and several armed trucks fell into the hands of the Islamists.

“Very quickly they took over,” said Islow Ahmed, who owns a small general store in Bulo Burti, which is located along one of the major north-south trading routes in Somalia. “We all want peace. But now we’re all afraid.”

Ever since it took over the capital in late 2006, Somalia’s transitional government has been struggling to suppress an Islamist insurgency. Thousands of Ethiopian Woyanne troops helped install the transitional government in Mogadishu and oust an Islamist administration that had controlled the city for six months.

But the Islamists are fighting back, gaining ground and recruits, and the transitional government seems increasingly on its heels.

Government officials say they desperately need help to defeat the Islamists, who the government believes are getting weapons and money from Arab countries. The government has pleaded for the United Nations to send in peacekeepers, but the United Nations has so far seemed reluctant to do so.

In recent weeks, the Islamists have routed government troops in several towns, though their typical strategy is to inflict losses, snatch weapons and then melt back into the bush. It was unclear on Monday whether Bulo Burti was one of the first towns the insurgents had seized — and held. Some residents said that the Islamists stayed after the fighting, retaining control over the roads leading in and out of town. But government officials said that the insurgents had eventually withdrawn.

The Islamists seem to have a lot of local support in Bulo Burti. In the fall of 2006, the town’s clerics threatened to behead anyone who did not pray five times a day.

But Abdi Awaleh Jama, an ambassador at large for the government, contended that the loss was not the result of an organized Islamist movement, but rather an extension of the clan fighting that has plagued Somalia for the past 17 years since the central government collapsed.

“It’s a flea biting,” he said. “These are clan militias. They use the name Islamists to get attention.”

The Islamists have often teamed up with clan militias, especially those who have their own long-standing grievances against the government. The Islamists came to power in 2006 by uniting clan militias and driving away the warlords who had been preying upon the population.
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Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu