Mogadishu, Somalia ? Ethiopia announced Friday that is pulling its forces from Somalia by year’s end, leaving the ravaged capital vulnerable to the Islamic militants who have seized nearly all of the country.

The decision ends the unpopular two-year presence of the key U.S. ally much as it began — with the militants in near-total control of a failed state with a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Ethiopia has sent thousands of troops here since early 2007, when it launched a U.S.-backed operation that drove the militants from Mogadishu after six months in power.

Since then, the Islamists have waged a ferocious insurgency, attacking U.N.-supported Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies nearly every day.

The United States worries that Somalia could be a terrorist breeding ground, particularly since Osama bin Laden declared his support for the Islamists. It accuses a faction known as al-Shabab — “The Youth” — of harboring the al-Qaida-linked terrorists who allegedly blew up the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Ethiopian forces have remained almost entirely in the capital, along with a small African Union force that has just 2,600 of the intended 8,000 troops and has largely been confined to urban bases.

The militants, meanwhile, have taken control of towns within miles of the capital and move freely inside Mogadishu.

A U.N. peacekeeping operation in the early 1990s saw the downing of two U.S. Army helicopters and killing of 18 American soldiers. The U.S. withdrew and U.N. peacekeepers were gone by 1995.

The United States said Friday it will push for a U.N. peacekeeping force to be deployed to Somalia.

“The United States regards deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping operation as essential for stability in Somalia and we are working with our Security Council and other partners to prepare a U.N. Security Council resolution on this matter,” said Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations said in New York.