The United Nations released nine Somali detainees Saturday, the first freed since a Security Council resolution suggested that all the detainees would be freed.

The nine were "low-level" members of Somali strongman Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid's Somali National Alliance faction, and were released for lack of evidence, said Dave Stockwell, the U.N. military spokesman.The Security Council voted Tuesday to lift an arrest warrant against Aidid and to set up a committee to investigate a June 5 attack in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed. Until now, the attack had been blamed on Aidid.

Stockwell told reporters 23 more of Aidid's supporters remained behind bars, three in a secret location and the rest in a U.N. detention center in Mogadishu. The three include Osman Hasan Aly, or Osman Ato, Aidid's largest financier, and his foreign adviser Mohammed Hasan Awale.

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The detainees have not had family visits or contact with outsiders except for Internatioanl Red Cross officials, Stockwell said. Reporters have so far not had access to the suspects.

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