While Ali Mohamed Gedi, the Somali Prime Minister, toured the south of his newly acquired capital to the sound of cheers, thousands took to the streets of northern Mogadishu to protest against the role of Ethiopia in driving out the Union of Islamic Courts.

They shouted anti-Ethiopian slogans as they burnt tyres and threw stones.

“We do not need and clearly we do not welcome Ethiopian forces here or anywhere in Somalia,” Muhamoud Abdi, a protester, said. Ethiopian tanks, aircraft and troops helped the forces of Mr Gedi’s interim Government to advance on Mogadishu in a whirlwind assault.

The militias of the Union of Islamic Courts, which had held the capital since June, melted away and their leaders abandoned the city.

Mr Gedi entered the bullet-scarred streets yesterday afternoon after a day of negotiations with clan elders about restoring calm to the city. He said that rebuilding would start by ridding the notoriously violent city of arms. “This country has been through a lot of anarchy, so to re-establish order we will have to have an iron hand, especially with the private militia,” he told reporters.

He travelled amid high security. His convoy of 22 vehicles was accompanied by 100 Ethiopian troops. Their tanks guarded the runway of Mogadishu airport and other key locations.

Mr Gedi’s only previous visit to Mogadishu since becoming Prime Minister had ended with an attempt on his life.

In two years his Government commanded little popular support and no territory beyond its base in the provincial town of Baidoa, until Ethiopian forces propelled him to Mogadishu.

Matt Bryden, a Somali analyst based in Nairobi, said that members of the Hawiye clan — the main source of the courts’ support — were nervous about how Mr Gedi’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) would treat them.

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