“We heard heavy weapons fire, and people were fleeing their homes,” Abdullahi Mohamed, a Mogadishu resident, told the Associated Press. Gunshots and explosions rang out across several neighbourhoods of the Somali capital as government forces and opposition-allied militias exchanged fire, damaging buildings.
The fighting began on Wednesday and carried into Thursday, ahead of a planned protest against President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s decision to extend his term. His mandate ran out last month. The extension has also pushed elections back, and the opposition sees it as a bid to centralise power. The government has rejected that accusation. Opposition leaders called for a peaceful demonstration on Thursday.
Police blamed “organised attacks” and tied them to political groups trying to take power. The AP reported large crowds on the streets and a heavy police presence.
Witnesses and critics
Ahmed Ismail told Reuters a mortar shell hit his neighbour’s house and injured a mother. “A big house near us is also ablaze,” he said. Another witness, Mohamud Farah, told the agency that two armoured vehicles had been set alight.
Former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire, who says security forces have targeted him, accused the government in a post on X of using “heavy weaponry” built for “conventional battlefield operations”. “These are weapons entrusted to the Somali state to fight Al-Shabaab, now turned against Somalia’s own leaders and citizens in an unprecedented campaign of political repression and targeted killing,” he wrote. He added that “civilian infrastructure has not been spared” and that electricity supplies had been “deliberately disrupted”.
No official casualty figures have been released. A security analyst who asked not to be named told AFP there were “civilian casualties in some areas”. AFP reported that the shooting had died down by 9:30am (06:30 GMT) on Thursday, when the government and the opposition began talks.
The African Union urged restraint and said it was deeply concerned by clashes in residential areas. The European Union and the US embassy in Mogadishu voiced similar concern.
A familiar pattern
Somalia has been fighting the armed group al-Shabab since 2007. It last held an election in 1969 and then spent more than 30 years in civil war. Mohamud is also not the first Somali president to overstay. In 2021, former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo remained in office for more than a year after his mandate officially ended, which brought violence and condemnation from abroad.
