Two Russian-made MiG-23s strafed the runway at the newly re-opened international airport in Mogadishu, the powerbase of the Islamic Courts Union(ICU), and at a second airfield at Baledogle, 60 miles outside the capital. Both were only partially destroyed.

An international scheduled flight from Dubai was able to land at Mogadishu just hours after the attack.

"People here are very nervous that more is coming, but they are saying they will fight to the death to repel this Ethiopian invasion," Mohamed Hassan Mahadi, a doctor, told The Daily Telegraph by telephone from Mogadishu.

"Radio stations are playing Somali victory songs from 1977 [when Ethiopia last invaded]. People are defiant."

The raids were part of Ethiopia's widening campaign against the Courts Union, which Addis Ababa fears is bent on exporting fundamentalist Islam into Ethiopia's majority-Muslim southeast.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the Courts' leader, has said he aims to bring ethnically Somali regions of neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia into a "Greater Somalia".

Ethiopia has sent thousands of soldiers and several tank units to reinforce Baidoa, the only town Somalia's toothless transitional government controls, and its air force carried out a series of bomb and missile attacks on Sunday against Islamist-held towns near to Baidoa, the seat of the government.

Further artillery onslaughts continued there today, and Islamic Courts troops were fighting "hand to hand" with militia loyal to the government in an arc of towns close to Baidoa, witnesses reported.

Addis further justifies its offensive with intelligence backed by Washington and Somalia analysts that al-Qa'eda agents are closely linked to the Courts' leaders and that Eritrea, Ethiopia's long-time enemy, is arming the Islamists.

"The Ethiopian government is bombing non-civilian targets in Somalia in order to disable and prevent the delivery of arms and supplies to the Islamic courts,'' said Bereket Simon, an adviser to Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi.

The Courts Union_has declared holy war against Ethiopia, and has issued a global call to arms for foreign Islamic fighters to join their side.

Residents in coastal Somali towns have reported boatloads of non-Somalis landing over the weekend.

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