People in Somalia's
southern Bakol region have denied a Somali Government claim that hundreds of heavily armed
troops from Ethiopia entered the area overnight.
Local residents contacted by a BBC correspondent in Mogadishu said the claim was false.
But they confirmed that a number of Ethiopian troops had previously entered Bakol and were
still there.
Earlier, Somali Deputy Defence Minister Mohamud Mohamed Heyd told the French news
agency AFP that about 300 Ethiopian troops had crossed the border on Thursday night and
Friday morning.
He said that the troops were supported by armoured personnel carriers and artillery.
The deputy minister said troops of the Somali transitional government were being sent
to the area.
There has been no word from Ethiopia itself.
Insecurity
Somalia has made claims in the past that Ethiopia is infringing on its territory.
The Somali Government has said that its neighbour is actively trying to destabilise the
country and is trying to establish a breakaway state in the south-west.
The Somali Government was elected at a reconciliation conference in Djibouti last
August and is the country's first central administration since 1991.
The government under President Abdulkassim Salat Hassan, however, has failed to take
control of much of the country beyond pockets of the capital, Mogadishu.
The rest of Somalia is divided into areas either seeing themselves as independent
countries or as fiefdoms of warlords.
In January, Somalia took its claims to the United Nations.
Ethiopia responded by saying that Somalia was using Ethiopia as a scapegoat for its own
problems.
Ethiopia argues that, given its long border with Somalia, the country has legitimate
national security concerns when the political situation is so volatile.