Birru has been accused of killing 329 people in the eastern Harargue region.

Two of his aides were also killed, according to a defence ministry statement broadcast on national radio.

The OLF operated in the south of Ethiopia and, according to Addis Ababa, enjoyed the backing of Eritrea, which has been at war with Ethiopia since May last year.

Some 142 OLF fighters were captured in an operation launched Monday, the statement said, without giving details of its location.

The Oromo are one of Ethiopia's largest ethnic groups.

The leader of Shentamo, another rebel group, was also taken prisoner, according to the ministry.

Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper reported Thursday that Ethiopian government forces and OLF fighters had clashed since Monday in the Taki region, on the border between the two countries.

Shelling could be heard at Takaha, 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Taki, and villagers fled the scene, the paper reported.

In recent years, Ethiopian troops have crossed the border into Kenya several times to pursue OLF fighters seeking refuge there.

According to Addis Ababa, 656 OLF fighters were killed and 425 were captured in clashes between May 27 and August 16.

Light weapons and other materiel were seized, the ministry said.

None of these claims have been independently corroborated.

On August 12, the ministry claimed that 1,103 fighters of the OLF, the southeastern secessionist Al Ittihad and the United Oromo Peoples Liberation Front or Tokuchuma, had been killed or captured since late May.

The ministry said these groups, together with a fourth, the Islamic Oromo Liberation Front, had led several attacks from areas in Somalia controlled by warlord Hussein Aidid.

Police spokesman Oliver Soko said Thursday the group was arrested Sunday on entry at Lilongwe International Airport after immigration officers became suspicious of their visas.

Immigration officer David Kambilonjo told reporters the Eritreans protested the arrest, saying they acquired the visas, at 1,000 US dollars each, from the Malawian embassy in Addis Abbaba. He said the group would be deported.

''Although the Eritreans have been protesting their arrest, we have already arranged with Ethiopian Airlines to take them back,'' he added.

Ziddy Medi, secretary for external affairs and international relations, denied the Eritreans' claims that they acquired the visas from the Malawi mission in Addis Ababa.

''There are no records that our embassy sold visas to 25 Eritreans; it must be an agency who sold them the visas,'' he said.

It was not immidiately clear whether the Eritreans were fleeing the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea to seek assylum in Malawi.

The last elections were held in 1995, and there was speculation the vote would be postponed because of Ethiopia's 13-month border conflict with Eritrea.

The board said 58 political parties have registered to participate in national and regional elections in the nation of 60 million in the Horn of Africa.

But only seven have registered to participate in the national election of members of Parliament.

The 550 members of the Council of People's Representatives, the lower chamber, and the members of nine regional councils are elected by direct vote for five-year terms.

The Somali faction leader, Hussein Mohammed Aideed, has suffered a serious setback after representatives of more than 20 communities voted to disown his administration and stop collecting taxes on its behalf.

After a meeting lasting nearly three weeks, representatives of the communities - in the district of Qoryoleh, south of the capital, Mogadishu - announced they were going to set up their own independent government.

They said they had the support of the former governor of the region, who was loyal to Mr Aideed.

There's been no word from Mr Aideed himself, but correspondents say it marks a serious loss of power for the militia leader.

The Somali Peace Alliance (SPA), grouping armed factions in central and southern Somalia, was announced in the town of Garowe in the northeast on Monday, but immediately criticised by rival groups in Mogadishu.

The new alliance includes factions from a self-styled state of "Puntland," the rift-ridden Somali National Front (SNF) of the Marehan clan, the United Somali Congress/Patriotic Movement (USC/SPM) of the Hawardle and the Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA).

The main clan warlords -- Hussein Mohamed Aidid, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, Colonel Ahmed Omar Jess and General Omar Haji Mohamed "Masale" – strongly denounced the new alliance, warning that it would lead to more bloodshed in Somalia.

"Somalia does not need new military alliances. SPA is, therefore, a setback to Somalia's well-being and peace, and is a provocative alliance that could lead to renewed bloodshed," a top Aidid aide warned. He charged that the SPA was "a creation of Ethiopia".

Warlord Osman Hassan Ali "Atto," who controls parts of south Mogadishu, also condemned the Garowe meeting, describing it as a "forum of war-thirsty elements."

Atto particularly accused Colonel Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed, the Puntland leader, of "being a warmonger and behind the SPA formation, at a time when the vast majority of Somalis cry for peace."

North Mogadishu warlord Hussein Haji Bod also condemned the SPA's formation, saying that those gathered in Garowe were invited only to commemorate the first anniversary of Puntland's formation in August last year, and "not to discuss politics and military matters."

But Colonel Omar Hashi Aden, one of the 27 founder members of the SPA, said the new alliance was a grouping of peace-loving Somalis threatened by "anarchists and foreign interventions," and accused Aidid of importing Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) fighters from Ethiopia and Eritreans into Somalia.

The SPA's formation came soon after a visit to Somalia by an Egyptian delegation to assess the political situation in the war-torn Horn of Africa nation. The delegation held talks with leaders in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland in northwest Somalia, in Puntland and in Mogadishu.

Last week, a 48-year-old Somali engineer, Abdi Nur Daman, also announced the formation of new political party in Somalia, which he pledged would help end the Somali political stalemate and lead up to a transitional government soon.

But a western diplomat who requested anonymity said Somalis needed to "stop their habitual political game and embark on genuine dialogue to bring peace to their country."

He called for peace efforts to be led by Somali civil society, because of the failure of more than a dozen accords between the country's various clan-based politico-military factions at war since President Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991.