Ethiopia has brushed off an Islamist ultimatum to leave Somalia in a week, as troops dug in on a slim frontline separating the powerful religious movement and the Ethiopian-backed government.
Mohamed Mahamud (13)
Fears the two will go to war ratcheted up as the rivals for control of the Horn of Africa country skirmished several times in the past week near Baidoa, the south-central trading town and now outpost of the Somali government.
Just outside Buur Hakaba, the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) base closest to the front with Baidoa, witnesses reported both sides digging trenches and moving troops.
"I witnessed Ethiopian and government troops on high alert. After less than 2 km (1 mile) I saw the SICC on a defence line and moving toward Daynunay," Baidoa shopkeeker Isman Ibrahim Hassan said on his way to Mogadishu.
Daynunay is the forward government post on the road to Islamist-controlled Mogadishu, which passes Buur Hakaba. Both sides have been building up there for months.
Belligerent rhetoric has been at a fever pitch for months, and rose after the UN Security Council on December 7th approved a peacekeeping deployment to help the government, a move the SICC has threatened to answer with holy war.
On Tuesday Islamist defence chief Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad "Inda'ade" said Ethiopian troops had seven days to leave the country or face war.
But Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi today again accused the SICC of months of aggression toward Ethiopia, as evidenced by their declaration of jihad. "We do not see any new thing which requires any new response ... We have been trying to get the issue resolved peacefully. If it is not resolved peacefully, it would be very unfortunate," Mr Zenawi said.
Inda'ade, known for past inflammatory remarks, said Ethiopia had about 30,000 troops inside Somalia, a figure far higher than the roughly 10,000 witnesses and security experts estimate.
Ethiopia, which accuses the SICC of being led by terrorists, maintains it only has a few hundred military trainers in Baidoa.
Security experts believe foreign fighters have been flying into Mogadishu by the hundreds over the past few days and preparations for an imminent war were evident. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has called on jihadists to come to fight foreign troops in Somalia.
In the southern port of Kismayu, the Islamists said they had signed up 900 men and 100 women in the three days since opening a recruiting office there. "We will give them training and then they will go to the front," senior Islamist Sheikh Hassan Yacquob said.
Among the new recruits was Mohamed Mahamud, 13: "My parents don't want me to go to war but I want fight for my country."
The Ethiopian presence has given the Islamists, who want to impose a strict form of sharia law nationwide, a powerful recruiting tool that exploits Somalis' deep nationalism and a millennium of rivalry with Ethiopia.
With Ethiopian foe Eritrea accused of backing the Islamists with arms and military advisers - a claim Asmara denies - many fear the Somali crisis could flare into a regional war.