MOGADISHU - Hundreds of heavily armed Muslim gunmen moved on a key southern port in Somalia on Saturday as the lawless nation’s powerful Islamist movement prepared to expand its territory, witnesses said.Backed by heavy artillery and machine-gun mounted pick-ups known as “battlewagons” or “technicals” several hundred Islamic fighters sped through towns south of Mogadishu to join forces already surrounding Kismayo, they said. “I saw 30 battlewagons passing by and headed to Kismayo,” said Ali Nuur Jiisow, a resident of Afgoi Yerey village on the road to the port, now held by a militia loyal to a top official in Somalia’s weak transitional government.
“The fighters were heavily armed and they all had their heads covered so you could only see their eyes,” he told AFP. He and others in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region said the Islamists had told them they were going to take control of Kismayo to prevent the proposed deployment of an