The Hezbul Islam (Islamic Party) , one of the two major insurgent groups in Somalia, on Monday sacked its leader Dr. Omar Iman Abu Bakar after accusing him of incompetence and going against the recent edicts of the pro- government Islamic scholars.

After being formed early in February by a coalition of Islamist insurgent groups against the Somali government, the Hezbul Islam soon waged a two-day deadly clashes against government forces and African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu late last month.

Senior leaders of the group said the fighting by its forces was contrary to the edicts issued by influential prominent Islamic scholars in Somalia, which stipulated that violence should be stopped to give the government time to implement the Islamic sharia law in Somalia and to ask AU forces to withdraw from the country.

"Dr. Omar Iman entered the Party into a war without consulting any of the other leadership and he also went against the recommendations of the Islamic clerics whom we will behind in every aspect," Sheikh Daud Mohamed Abtidon, new spokesman for the group told reporters in Mogadishu.

Abtidon presented Sheikh Mohamed Hassan Ahmed "Amey", a relative unknown figure, as the new Hezbul Islam leader who pledged to work with the pro-government Islamic scholars.

The move by the group is seen as a change of policy in the faction's top leadership who now said they will go along with the Islamic Scholars Association, a grouping of senior clerics who support the government.

The association recommended that the sharia law be implemented in Somalia which the government officials accepted. The clerics also recommended that the AU peacekeeping forces in the war-torn Horn of Africa nation be withdrawn, but the Somali government has not officially accepted it.

A recent call by Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdulahi Oomar to the UN Security Council for more peacekeepers to Somalia drew an uproar from the pro-government clerics and civil society groups, which forced government officials to distance themselves from the minister's statement, saying the government only wanted to request "military aid and not for more peacekeepers".

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2009)