Gun battles have erupted in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in what residents said on Thursday was the worst violence there in years. Government forces were fighting militia groups loyal to two of the president’s rivals, residents and analysts said.
They said the clashes stemmed from Parliament’s contentious decision to extend President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s term in office. It was not clear how the fighting began, but the president’s rivals had called for protests on Thursday, and their fighters and the government’s forces had moved into close proximity.
Here’s a look at the violence in the East African country and why it matters.
What happened?
Before dawn on Thursday, residents of Mogadishu, a city of about three million people, said they began hearing gunfire and the sounds of mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, coming from a district where government forces and armed men loyal to the president’s rivals had been massing for days. Videos show nearly empty streets and captured the sound of gunfire and explosions.
No information about casualties was immediately available. Fighting was continuing on Thursday afternoon, residents said, and some in the capital were fleeing to safer neighborhoods.
One resident, Fartun Da’ud, 27, a mother of two, said: “I no longer trust that I can live in this country. No politician seems concerned about our safety.”
“I’m worried about my children,” she added.
The fighting broke out near the homes of two opposition leaders, former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and former Prime Minister Hassan Khayre. Both residences are also bases for the men’s private security forces, making them centers of military muscle within Mogadishu.
Samira Gaid, a political analyst in the city, said that the clashes began after government forces tried to drive Mr. Khayre’s forces out of a neighborhood near the presidential palace.
Clan elders, who play a powerful role in Somali politics, were trying to negotiate an end to the fighting, Ms. Gaid said in an interview on Thursday.
On Wednesday, there had been a smaller outbreak of fighting. That night, Mr. Ahmed said that Mr. Mohamud had ordered “a sustained and indiscriminate military assault with the apparent objective of killing me.” Speaking to journalists, he added, “If I have a single bullet left, any man that fires at me, I’ll fire back at him.”
What led to the fighting?
Tensions have built since an announcement last month by opposition leaders, including Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Khayre, that they would lead demonstrations on Thursday to protest what they said was an illegal extension of the president’s term in office.
Mr. Mohamud’s term was to expire on May 15. But in March, Somalia’s bicameral Parliament, with the president’s encouragement, voted to extend his term by one year. Opposition politicians denounced the move.
In mid-May, negotiations sponsored by the United States and Britain, aimed at defusing what amounted to a constitutional crisis, broke down. Ms. Gaid, the analyst, said that the talks had begun too late to be effective.
Mr. Mohamud had framed the extension of his term, and of those of members of Parliament, as part of a plan for more direct democracy, moving Somalia away from indirect elections — in which clans and regional leaders vote for lawmakers — toward a one-person-one-vote system.
Opposition politicians, calling themselves the Somali Future Council, said that the plan would lead to the entrenchment of the president’s power and was unworkable. Many Somalis, they said, would be disenfranchised by direct elections, given that the militant group Al Shabab controls parts of the country.
On Thursday, the U.S. Embassy described the fighting as reckless and urged calm. “Somali leaders on all sides have a responsibility to preserve stability and resolve differences through peaceful means.” Other countries also called for dialogue.
Omar Mahmood, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the fighting was the “inevitable result of a lack of compromise.”
What is the wider context?
President Trump described Somalia in December as “not even a country.” But the Pentagon has been working with the government in Mogadishu, conducting scores of airstrikes against militant targets in the country.
For 15 years, Somali politicians have been working toward stable statehood under a federal system, after years in which there was no recognized central government at all — the definition of a failed state. Since 2012, it has completed two full electoral cycles, though the end of the previous electoral mandate, in 2021, also saw serious clashes in Mogadishu.
The government faces severe security challenges. It is reliant on an African Union peacekeeping force and the United Nations to keep Al Shabab at bay.
Last month, a report by the United Nations and aid groups found that about 1.88 million children in Somalia were expected to need treatment for acute malnutrition this year, while around six million people — about 30 percent of the population — faced acute food insecurity.
Nonetheless, Somalia has played an increasingly significant geopolitical role, partly because of its coastline on the Gulf of Aden, near the Red Sea. Those waterways are conduits for global shipping and have been made all the more important by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
