EDITOR’S NOTE: Just two days ago, Woyanne foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin was telling the media that the insurgents “had been critically weakened.” He said: “They cannot sustain their own activities, let alone disband the government.”

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somali insurgents wrested back control of Somalia’s southern port of Kismayo on Friday following three days of bloody battles with a local militia that left at least 40 people dead, witnesses said.

The retaking of the town by the Islamists came more than a year after they were driven out of Kismayo by Ethiopian Woyanne forces backing the Somali government.

“We repelled the local militias who tried to stop the light of the Islam religion,” said an Islamist commander and spokesman, Sheikh Muktar Robow.

“We aim to implement Islamic Sharia (law) in the country and any force that tries to stop (us) will regret” it, added the spokesman, a leader of the Shabab organization, the military wing of the Islamic Courts Union which briefly controlled large parts of Somalia in 2006.

Local residents also affirmed the Islamists had seized power in Somalia’s second largest city.

“Kismayo is completely under the control of the Islamists,” said Mohamed Abdi, a trader and former government official.

Another local resident Farah Abdi said: “All militias were driven out and the town is now controlled by the Islamists.”

Three days of clashes have killed 40 people and left several hundred civilians and fighters dead, according to the most recent estimate — taking into account new deaths at Kismayo’s hospital.

“So far 335 people who were wounded in the three day clashes were admitted in the hospital and six of them died from their injuries,” a medical official at the hospital said on condition of anonymity.

The previous toll placed at 34 the number killed.

Clashes erupted Wednesday between Islamist forces and the militiamen that had controlled Kismayo since the previous rulers fled in early 2007 at the height of the Ethiopian Woyanne onslaught.

A commander of a local armed group denied his militia had been routed by the Islamists, claiming instead that he had ordered his men to make “a tactical withdrawal to avoid a large number of civilian casualties.”

“There is no complete takeover and our forces will regain control of Kismayo in a very short time,” said the commander, Mohamud Hassan.

Another militia commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they hoped to regain control of the key port in the next day or two.

Several corpses still lay on Friday in the combat zones as it was too dangerous for residents to go and collect the bodies, other witnesses said.

“We buried around 12 dead bodies this morning and some of them were unidentified civilians caught in the cross-fire,” said Mohammed Omar, a Kismayo pharmacist.

Militia in Kismayo, some 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu, are headed by Aden Barre Shire Hirale, a warlord and a lawmaker who has strained relations with President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed’s administration.

Ethiopian Woyanne troops were deployed in late 2006 to prop up government forces battling the Islamist fighters who had taken control of much of southern and central Somalia. Kismayo was the Islamists’ last stronghold.

Since the toppling of the Islamist movement at the end of 2006, remnant fighters have resorted to guerrilla tactics against the Ethiopian forces, government soldiers and African Union peacekeepers in the capital Mogadishu.

Civilians have borne the heaviest brunt of battles between Islamist fighters and the Ethiopian forces. At least 6,000 have died in the past year alone, many in Mogadishu, the scene of almost daily attacks.

Hardline Islamists, including the spokesman Robow, have rejected a United Nations-backed truce between moderate Islamists and the government reached in June, insisting that the Ethiopians must pull out.