Amid new charges and counter-charges about acquisitions of military hardware by bickering factions in Somalia's transitional government, the panel said it was alarmed by a "dramatic upswing" in weapons deliveries to rival camps.

"The dramatic upswing in the flow of arms into Somalia is a manifestation of the highly aggravated political tension between the (transitional government) and the opposition," according to UN Monitoring Group on Somalia.

"This has correspondingly given rise to the increasing militarization of both sides, which has resulted in the severely elevated threat of widespread violence in in central and southern Somalia," it said.

The report, seen by AFP on Tuesday, was sent to the UN Security Council late last week by the panel which is charged with reviewing the 1992 arms embargo slapped on Somalia after it descended into anarchy a year earlier with the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.

In it, the experts said neighboring Ethiopia, Yemen and an unnamed third country in the region were violating the embargo with increasing weapons shipments to the increasingly hostile factions within the transitional government.

In addition, they said private Yemeni arms dealers and Ethiopia's rebel Oromo National Liberation Front (ONLF) were fueling instability by smuggling arms to the profit-driven weapons market in the lawless capital of Mogadishu.

The report accused Ethiopia and Yemen of supplying weapons to the government faction allied with transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who has incurred the wrath of a rival camp by refusing to base himself in Mogadishu.

It did not identify the third country involved in the illicit shipments, but aides to Yusuf have repeatedly claimed that Eritrea is channelling weapons to the president's foes in retaliation for arch-foe Ethiopia's support of him.

Yusuf is opposed by some members of his government, lawmakers and the warlords who control Mogadishu and insist that the administration should be based in the capital.

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