Ethiopian troops, who have been propping up Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for the past two years, are implementing their plan of withdrawal from the Horn of Africa nation, a government official confirmed on Friday.
"The process has been started, but it would take some more days," Bereket Simon, Public Relations Advisor to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told Xinhua.
Bereket said he didn't know how many days the process would take to bring all Ethiopian troops back home.
"We have already started to implement our withdrawal plan," he said.
The withdrawal of Ethiopian troops came at a time that Somalia was in a deepening political crisis. Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed resigned this week, saying that he cannot execute his duties as President.
The international community is worrying that there would be a dangerous security vacuum in Somalia's capital Mogadishu and other big cities after the withdrawal of up to 3,000 Ethiopian soldiers.
On Friday, a column of more than twenty trucks full of Ethiopian soldiers and their belongings were moving along the road linking the southern town of Baidoa and the capital Mogadishu, witnesses said.
"The soldiers waved to the displaced people in the Elasha camps," said Muse Farah, an eyewitness in the camps along the road between Mogadishu and Afgooye, 30 km northwest of the capital.
Ethiopian troops, whose presence in Somalia has been unpopular with most Somalis, have been preparing for withdrawal since the Ethiopian Government announced, in a letter sent last month to the African Union (AU) and the United Nations, its decision to pull its troops out of Somalia by the end of last year.
Ethiopia said it would finally withdraw its troops from Somalia during the first week of this month after a number of previous deadlines failed because of logistical difficulties.
Ethiopian troops have since been setting up bases along the road between Mogadishu and the southern town of Baidoa, the seat of the Somali Parliament.
The route is a possible exit for Ethiopian troops who have remained deployed in Somalia after they crossed into the country in late 2006 to help Somali government forces oust an Islamist administration that run much of south-central Somalia.
However, the insurgents have since been carrying out daily attacks on the Ethiopian troops backing the Somali government forces as well as the 3,400 AU peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi in Mogadishu.
The insurgents have gained ground and are now in control of almost all of central and southern Somalia while the Somali government only controls Mogadishu and Baidoa.