Calm in the south after factional violence near Kismayo

Southern Somalia's port city of Kismayo was reported calm on Tuesday following last week's fighting between two rival armed factions in the surrounding areas, residents said.

"There has been no fighting anywhere in the Juba Valley since Saturday," a source told IRIN by telephone from Kismayo. The city is situated in the Juba Valley area. He said that most of the people who fled their villages near Kismayo had returned to their homes.

Those who fled included an estimated 500 people who crossed the border into Kenya at the end of last week and who are now living with local communities on the Kenyan side of the frontier.

Most of the Somalis came from the village of Dhobley, not far from the border, and entered Kenya through the border town of Liboi on Friday and early Saturday, UNHCR spokesman Emmanuel Nyabera told IRIN on Monday. He said most of them had expressed willingness to go back to their home area once calm had returned.

The fighting pitted forces of the Juba Valley Alliance, the faction that controls Kismayo, against those loyal to General Muhammad Sa'id Hirsi "Morgan", who has made several attempts to capture the city in the recent past.

Meanwhile, members of the newly created Somalia transitional federal parliament on Tuesday pledged to remain committed to the peace process. The MPs signed a peace declaration during a function to mark the International Day of Peace in the Kenya capital, Nairobi.