The demolition of stalls selling tea, vegetables and other small goods by the roadside left behind piles of corrugated metal sheets and wooden planks.

“The campaign is aimed at ending illegal businesses built on the streets to help police perform security patrols and to revive the lost image of the capital,” said Mohamed Dheere, a former warlord who was recently named mayor of Mogadishu.

Dheere said the stalls were built illegally and without official approval. But this war-ravaged country was without an effective central government for more than a decade, forcing residents to support themselves in any way possible.

The current administration is trying to assert control after quelling a ferocious insurgency that killed more than 1,000 people since March. The militants, who are linked to an Islamic group that ruled Mogadishu for six quiet months last year, reject any secular government and vow to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic state.

“We are happy to see the law and order returning, but in the meantime we need to run our businesses,” said Saa’id Muqtar Ahmed, a 25-year-old welder who was carrying the remnants of his destroyed stall on his back.

Samsam Sheik Abdullahi, a mother of four whose tea kiosk was torn down, said she has no idea how she will earn money now.

“My husband died three years ago,” she told The Associated Press. “This will lead my family into financial troubles, I have nowhere to turn.”

In March, troops from neighboring Ethiopia used tanks and attack helicopters to crush a growing insurgency linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, a hard-line religious movement that had controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six months in 2006.

The group was driven from power in December by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers. The U.S. had accused the Islamic group of having ties to al-Qaida.

The militants reject any secular government, and vow to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic state. The government declared victory in late April, but the militants have vowed to take back the city.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then fought each other. The western city of Baidoa, where the interim parliament is based, was dubbed the “City of Death” in the 1990s amid a searing drought and famine.

The government’s actions mirror those of other African nations, including Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, which over the years have demolished street stalls and kiosks — only to see them rebuilt.

Vendors argue that they have no alternative to earning a livelihood, but the governments counter that the structures are illegal because they are built in areas not set aside for kiosks or stalls.

Many African nations have high unemployment rates, leading many to turn to informal businesses to survive.

Also Tuesday, Somalia’s national union of journalists said reporter Mohammed Abdullahi Khalif was killed Saturday in the crossfire when soldiers stormed a gun market in the autonomous region of Puntland to retrieve a weapon stolen from the army.

WFP distributes aid in Mogadishu

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday it had carried out its first aid distributions in Mogadishu since Somalia’s capital was blasted by the heaviest fighting for 16 years, according to Guled Mohamed of Reuters.

Some 1,300 people died and hundreds of thousands more fled battles last month between insurgents and allied Somali-Ethiopian forces who attacked each other for more than a week with machineguns, artillery and rockets.

“We started in the heaviest damaged areas in north Mogadishu, where the fighting was concentrated,” WFP country director Peter Goossens said in a statement.

“But we are also reaching many of those who are still outside Mogadishu and are too frightened to return, but are struggling in terrible conditions under trees in the rain.”

Some 16,000 residents received handouts, WFP said, adding that by the end of the week it hoped to have reached 114,000 in and around the shell-scarred coastal city since April 27.

Urgent aid operations continued to be expanded, it said, “given the prevailing security situation.” It said it planned to deliver 5 tonnes of food on Tuesday to Mogadishu hospitals.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says its has treated some 3,000 “weapon-wounded” Somalis so far this year, but that this was only a fraction of the injured. Most could not venture out to seek help because of the fighting.

Aid workers had thought 2006 was a terrible year in Somalia, said Red Cross spokesman Pascal Hundt, as the nation was ravaged by the worst droughts and floods in more than a decade.

“But this year Mogadishu has gone from blitzkrieg to insurgency, killing hundreds, and on top of that their has been a cholera epidemic,” Hundt told a news conference in Nairobi. “The people we help are so exhausted by insecurity and hunger.”

The relief agency appealed for $15.4 million to boost its work in the Horn of Africa nation, where it is also providing drinking water, shelter and medicines to those who have fled Mogadishu, many sheltering in the open in surrounding districts.

There has been relative calm in the capital since the interim government, which is backed by Ethiopia and the United States, declared victory over the rebels more than a week ago.

The insurgency began after the government and its Ethiopian military allies defeated Islamist fighters in a lightning offensive at the end of last year.

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(Additional reporting by Jeremy Clarke in Nairobi and Richard Waddington in Geneva)