Hundreds of the government's own soldiers stormed the seaside palace of President Sheik Sharif Ahmed Saturday demanding several months' back pay they were owed, members of parliament reported.

They said the mutineers barricaded the palace and held the president and 20 legislators inside for several hours.

At one point, the legislators said, the mutineers exchanged gunfire with some soldiers from the 4,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force that keeps the fragile Transitional Federal Government in power.

The disgruntled troops withdrew after Ahmed personally assured them they would be paid.

Thousands of TFG troops haven't been paid for months, despite financial aid for the government from the United States. Many are reported to have defected to the Islamist insurgents of al-Shebaab.

These insurgents control most of the capital on the Indian Ocean coast, except a few blocks around the palace, the airport and seaport.

They also have a heavy presence in the center of Somalia and on Saturday took control of the strategic town of Beledweyne near the border with Ethiopia.

The regime in Addis Ababa, backed by the United States, sent its forces into Somalia in December 2006 to unseat a short-lived Islamist government and install the internationally recognized TFG.

Ethiopia withdrew six months later and the TFG has been hanging on by its fingernails ever since, propped up by the AU peacekeeping force and U.S. military aid.

Al-Shebaab forces drove out militiamen of their main rival, Hizb-ul Islam, from Bedelweyne in the Hiran region largely because they had more firepower, relief agency officials reported.

The two militias have jointly controlled Hiran for several months but al-Shebaab has gained strength, largely through the defection last week of some Hizb-ul Islam fighters in the Jalalaksi district.

Another major Islamist militia, the relatively moderate Ahlu Sunna wal-Jamea, recently allied themselves with the TFG.

That was the latest in a bewildering series of shifting allegiances in a complex, clan-driven conflict that has raged since warlords overthrew the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.

But, as is the way of things in this incomprehensible struggle, the head of the Ahlu Sunna's consultative council, Sheik Omar Abdulkadir, has accused the TFG of not honoring the pact they made in Addis Ababa in March under AU auspices.

Under that deal, the militia leaders were supposed to get Cabinet posts in a power-sharing arrangement in return for Ahlu Sunna's military support.

Abdulkadir, a cleric, said Ahlu Sunna had nominated several of its chieftains for seats in the government but the TFG hadn't "responded adequately."

He warned that his militia would withdraw from the alliance and "retaliate strongly" if the TFG continued to ignore the terms of the agreement.

"We've done everything within our power to respect the agreement with the government," Abdulkadir said.

The withdrawal of Ahlu Sunna's fighting forces, numbering several thousand, would be a major setback for the TFG and leave it dangerously weakened in the face of al-Shebaab's growing strength.

The Islamists recently gained ground in Mogadishu at the TFG's expense in a flurry of fighting in which scores of people were killed. Most were civilians who have borne the brunt of the clashes over the years.

Meantime, Somali officials and al-Shebaab defectors claim that scores, possibly hundreds, of foreign fighters trained by al-Qaida in Pakistan have reinforced the Islamists and have gained influence within the leadership.

These consist largely of Pakistanis and Arabs, the sources said.

This indicated an internationalization of the conflict, which the Americans suspect is intended to create an Islamist bloc in the strategic region stretching from Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, to the Horn of Africa.

This embraces vital shipping lanes used by oil tankers sailing to and from the Persian Gulf and threaten oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

These routes include the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea that, with the Suez Canal, links the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Al-Qaida is highly active in Yemen, where the government is steadily losing control to security threats in the north and south, a collapsing economy and a worsening water crisis.

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