MOGADISHU, Somalia – The Islamic militiamen controlling the Somali capital broke up a wedding celebration because a band was playing and women and men were socializing together, witnesses said Saturday, describing the latest crackdown by a group feared to be installing Taliban-style rule in this African nation.

The Islamic fighters beat band members with electric cables and confiscated their equipment, said Asha Ilmi Hashi, a singer with the group Mogadishu Stars.

“We had warned the family not to include in their ceremony what is not allowed by the sharia law. This includes the mixing of men and women and playing music,” said Sheik Iise Salad, who heads an Islamic court in the northeastern Huriwaa District. “That is why we raided and took their equipment.”

“What was going on there was un-Islamic,” Salad said.

The late Friday attack came three days after militiamen in central Somalia shot and killed two people at the screening of a World Cup soccer broadcast banned because it violated the fighters’ strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The Islamic group said it has arrested two of its fighters who shot and killed the victims.

Washington has said some leaders and members of the militia that seized control of the capital and much of the south last month have links to al-Qaida and are sheltering terror network members responsible for the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Osama bin Laden said in a recorded message last month that Somalia was a battleground in his war on the United States.