A rush-hour crawl that gave vehicles little momentum to slide into the river and a bridge design that minimised falling debris appear to have kept the death toll relatively low in the collapse of a bridge into the Mississippi River.

An Islamic militia with alleged al-Qaida links has seized Somalia’s capital Mogadishu after weeks of bloody fighting with US-backed secular warlords, raising fears that the nation could fall under the sway of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation.