Parliamentarians in Somalia have authorized the government to declare martial law for three months to restore security after weeks of fighting against ousted rival Islamists.

The country's deputy parliamentary Speaker said 154 MPs voted by a show of hands on Saturday in favour of the measure, while only two voted against.

Former police officers loyal to Somalia's transitional government patrol a street of Mogadishu.
(Mohamed Sheikh Nor/Associated Press)

The remainder of Somalia's 275 lawmakers were not present. They were either in the capital, Mogadishu, or in neighbouring Kenya, or elsewhere.

The voting took place in the southern town of Baidoa and came as government and Ethiopian soldiers began searching homes for weapons near Mogadishu's main airport.

Earlier this month, Somali government forces backed by Ethiopian troops drove an Islamic movement out of the Somali capital. The Islamists had ruled most of the south for six months.

Despite moves by the transitional government to restore order, sporadic fighting between rival clans continues.

At least nine people were killed on Saturday in the central town of Biyo-Adde when fighting broke out in a local market, residents said.

The transitional government said it has sent police from its headquarters in nearby Jowhar.

16 years of chaos

Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the Horn of Africa nation of seven million people into chaos.

Ethiopia sent troops in on Dec. 24 to attack the Somali Islamic fundamentalist movement.

Most of the Islamic militiamen have dispersed, but a few hardcore members have fled south toward the Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean, and others in hiding in the capital have threatened to wage guerrilla war.

The United States, United Nations and the African Union all want to deploy peacekeepers to stop Somalia from returning to clan-based violence and anarchy.

But so far no African governments have responded to the call for an 8,000-strong peacekeeping force for the country, although Uganda has indicated it is willing to send 1,500 peacekeepers as part of a wider mission.

With files from the Associated Press