20091214

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali rebels have executed two men for adultery and murder, but the verdict prompted a battle between two insurgent factions that killed three of the gunmen, witnesses said on Monday.

It was the first time Hizbul Islam guerrillas had meted out the type of punishments that are usually associated with the more hardline al Shabaab rebel group, which the United States says is al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state.

President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's Western-backed government controls just a few strategic sites in Mogadishu.

Western security experts say the country has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the impoverished region and beyond.

The latest executions took place on Sunday in Afgoye, where thousands of families uprooted by the violence are sheltering some 30 km (19 miles) southwest of the capital.

Hizbul Islam fighters summoned hundreds of residents to a field, where a rebel judge announced that the two men had confessed to murder and adultery. A woman who had confessed to fornication had been sentenced to 100 lashes, he added.

"This is their day of justice," the judge, Osman Siidow Hasan, told the crowd. "We investigated and they confessed."

But the reading of the sentence prompted an argument, and then a gun battle, between two Hizbul factions, residents said.