MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somalia’s Islamist armed group Shebab warned Sunday against any foreign military intervention after the embattled government pleaded for help from its African neighbours.

“We are sending our clear warning to the neighboring countries…. Send your troops to our holy soil if you need to take them back inside coffins,” Shebab spokesman Sheik Ali Mohamed Rage told a press conference in Mogadishu.

“We tell you that our dogs and cats will enjoy eating the dead bodies of your boys if you try to respond to the calls of these stooges, because we wish to die in the way of Allah more than you wish to live,” he added.

Somalia’s parliament speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur on Saturday urged neighbouring countries to send troops to his country within 24 hours to prop up the government.

Hardline Islamist insurgents, on an offensive since May 7 to oust a UN-backed transitional government led by moderate Islamist Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, have stepped up attacks in the past week.

Three top officials have been killed in recent days, including a lawmaker, Mogadishu’s top police commander and a minister who died in a suicide bombing.

Around 300 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in the six-week-old battle and more than 125,000 displaced, according to UN figures and casualty tolls compiled by AFP.

The African Union has about 4,300 troops deployed in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.

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