A day after the Islamists declared victory following four months of bloody battles with the alliance for control of Mogadishu, the city was fractured along clan lines with remaining warlords vowing not to bow to demands to surrender.
The two camps held rival rallies in the city as hundreds of Islamic fighters camped outside the warlords' last stronghold of Jowhar, about 90 kilometres north of Mogadishu, awaiting orders to attack the town.
About 500 Muslim militiamen backed by more than 100 machine-gun mounted pick-ups were about 10 kilometres south of Jowhar in Kalinow village.
A short distance away at the Kongo military base, an equal number of gunmen loyal to Mohamad Dheere, the warlord who controls Jowhar, readied for a potential onslaught.
"The two groups are about three kilometers apart," said one elder, stressing that both sides were under heavy pressure not to attack. The alliance is ready to defend Jowhar but it is unlikely they will fight soon," an observer said.
Jowhar is the most significant remaining position held by the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT), but holdout warlords in the capital refused to accept the fall of Mogadishu.
Although there was no fighting, clan elders in northern Mogadishu voiced support for the alliance and warned miltias affiliated with the city's 11 Islamic courts to steer clear of their territory.
Protests
Resistance was being led by the Abgal sub-clan, a faction of the larger Hawiye tribe to which most people living in Mogadishu belong, which controls the northern part of the city.
About 1,500 people gathered in a stadium in Abgal territory to protest against the Islamists, chanting, "We will defend northern Mogadishu from any attack" and "We want our own Islamic courts", witnesses said.
At the rally, warlords Musa Sudi Yalahow and Bashir Raghe Shirar, two of the three holding out, insisted the ARPCT was alive and well despite its apparent military defeat at the hands of the Islamists.
At the far northern edge of Mogadishu, hundreds of Muslims gathered to hear Islamic leaders demand the immediate surrender of Yalohow and Shirar and restate their intention to bring the entire city under Sharia law.
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the leader of Islamic courts vowed to push for an imposition of Sharia across Somalia, a nation of about 10 million people.
But Sheikh Shirar said earlier that he would never give up and repeated charges the Islamists were harbouring extremists, including Al-Qaeda members.
The warlord alliance was created in February with US support in a bid to curb the growing influence of the Islamic courts, hunt down the extremists they are accused of harboring and disrupt possible plans for terrorist attacks.
US concerned
Washington has never publicly confirmed or denied its support for the alliance but US officials told AFP they had given the warlords money and intelligence to help to rein in "creeping Talibanization" in Somalia.
However, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday that Washington was not de-stablising Somalia by supporting local warlords, but insisted it needed to fight the presence of Al-Qaeda in the east African country.
"We certainly want to work with people in Somalia who are interested in combating terrorism," McCormack said. "The presence of foreign terrorists in Somalia is a destabilising fact in and of itself."
US President George W Bush said on Tuesday that he was "concerned" about unrest in Somalia and that the United States would ensure that the country does not become a terrorist haven.
"The first concern, of course, would be to make sure that Somalia does not become an Al-Qaeda safe haven, it doesn't become a place from which terrorists can plot and plan," he said.
"And so we're watching very carefully the developments there, and we will strategise more when I get back to Washington as to how to best respond to the latest incident there in Somalia," said Mr Bush.