MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's new hardline opposition leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys has vowed to protect aid workers in the Horn of Africa nation where insecurity has stopped many groups from working.
The United Nations said last week that recent killings and kidnappings of aid workers in Somalia threatened to wreck all efforts to end one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
Aweys, an Islamist cleric who is on U.S. and U.N. lists of al Qaeda suspects, called on the international community to help his Eritrea-based opposition group expel Ethiopian forces supporting the country's fragile Western-backed government.
Islamist insurgents have waged an Iraq-style insurgency of roadside bombs, mortar attacks and assassinations against the administration and its Ethiopian allies since early last year.
The rebels have blamed government hardliners for a wave of attacks targeting humanitarian staff.
In one such incident, gunmen stormed the offices of Rome-based Cooperazione Italiana Nord Sud and kidnapped two Italian workers and their Somalian colleague.
But Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters on Thursday the two Italians, at least, were alive.
"Contacts are in progress to free them," he added in Rome.
Somali officials deny that they are behind the kidnappings.
"We are very grateful to the aid workers who are helping the starving Somali community and we strongly condemn those who kill or abduct them," Aweys told Reuters by telephone from Asmara.
"We shall do what we can to safeguard aid workers especially in the areas under our control. We shall help, escort and defend them. They are killed by the enemies who then put the blame on us," the former prison service colonel said late on Wednesday.
Somalia's deputy prime minister and information minister, Ahmed Abdisalan, called for unity in the country, which is awash with arms. He said groups opposed to peace were behind the attacks on humanitarian workers.
"We are saddened by the attacks on foreign and local aid workers. As long as we are divided and still have arms in our possession, groups opposed to peace will take advantage of the chaos to inflict harm on aid workers," he said.
The killings and threats against humanitarian workers have shocked U.N. agencies and aid groups and forced many to consider suspending operations in the lawless nation, which has not had an effective central government since 1991.
In the latest incident of intimidation, the Elman Peace and Human Rights group said it had been forced into hiding.
On Thursday, clashes between the rebels and Ethiopians killed at least five people in the central town of Beledweyne.
More than 8,000 civilians have been killed and 1 million uprooted since allied Somali-Ethiopian soldiers routed Aweys' sharia courts group from Mogadishu at the start of last year.
Aweys took control of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), an umbrella group based in the Eritrean capital, on Tuesday after expelling the moderate Sheikh Sharif Ahmed for signing a peace deal with the interim government.
On Wednesday, the African Union said a small peace force it sent to Mogadishu was unable to stabilise the situation and urged the United Nations to take over its duties.
