Somalia: Gov’t troops clash leaving 5 dead.

(SomaliNet) Five people were killed in Somalia on Saturday after Somali government troops clashed among each other, Radio Garowe said.

According to the report, the violence sparked after a bomb blast killed a military officer named Col. Ahmed Ali Atoyo in the agricultural town of Afgoye, 30km south of Somali capital Mogadishu.

Somali police units who were trained in Ethiopia and recently deployed in Somalia’s southern regions entered nearby internally displaced peoples\' camps, where they arrested several suspects.

The police officers came under fire from local police, who are loyal to Nuriye Ali Farah and Ali Ganey, former police commanders of Lower Shabelle region, witnesses said.

\"Three civilians were killed when the police opened fire,\" said a witness, adding that two other dead bodies belonged to the fighting sides.

Federal police have reportedly \"taken control\" of Afgoye, according to local sources.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf issued a decree last week dismissing both Mr. Farah and Mr. Ganey as Lower Shabelle\'s top police officials, after the men were accused of having links to the anti-government insurgency.

But both Mr. Farah and Mr. Ganey have rejected the Somali leader\'s decision, saying that they \"will fight\" all government forces that try to disarm them.

The two men have been senior police commanders in Lower Shabelle region since the reign of Yusuf Indha Ade, ex-defense chief of the Islamic Courts movement that ruled south-central Somalia in 2006.

Indha Ade, who is one of the insurgency\'s commanders, was the warlord of Lower Shabelle region in the years prior to the Islamists\' rise when he was accused of alienating and subjugating local unarmed clans.-Garowe Online