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 MOGADISHU: Shopkeepers sifted through the ashes of tin-roofed shops and kiosks in Mogadishu yesterday after a fire tore through one of the world’s biggest open air weapons markets, killing one and sparking widespread looting. Crowds of business owners, anxious to assess their losses, stormed the sprawling Bakara market, where everything from toothpaste to AK-47 rifles and counterfeit passports can be bought for a price.
“I have lost more than $25,000 in items that were in my kiosk,” trader Mohamed Osman said.
“I do not know where to start my life. I have seven children, and the kiosk was our only source of income.”
Authorities are investigating the cause of the blaze, which gutted much of the market on Tuesday night. It was the third to hit Bakara in two years.
Overnight, residents said they could hear explosions from the market, which houses stockpiles of ammunition and arms. After police lifted a cordon around area, many traders arrived to see their lives in ruins.
“I was afraid. I didn’t go to Bakara last night because I knew that there would be shooting and looting,” said shop owner, Ibrahin Madey. “I lost $8,000. My whole kiosk was burnt to ashes.”
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told local radio late on Tuesday the government would do whatever it could to rebuild the market - the site of frequent attacks on government soldiers by suspected Islamist insurgents.
But food-seller Hussein Madobe said it was too late. “I don’t think that I will be able to go back in business again,” he said. “I lost all I had left.”
Yesterday, fierce clashes erupted in the capital between Ethiopian-backed Somali forces and Islamist fighters, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy casualties, officials and witnesses said.
The overnight fighting was focused around the former defence ministry building in southern Mogadishu.
Sheikh Mukhtar Robo Abu Mansur, the commander of the Shabab movement in Mogadishu, said by phone that his fighters had killed 12 Somali soldiers and five Ethiopians.
Robo, a senior figure in the Islamist movement which was ousted from power by a joint Ethiopian-Somali force in January, accused the government forces of deliberately shelling Bakara market in a bid to destroy property.
Somali police spokesman Abduwahid Mohamed rejected Robo’s account, saying government forces had killed 13 insurgents and lost only one soldier.
“The insurgents attacked the government bases ... but they lost the battle,” Mohamed said. Insurgent attacks in Mogadishu have increased since an Islamist-dominated opposition group formed last month in Eritrea vowed to drive Ethiopian troops out of Somalia.
The Shabab are extremist elements of the Islamist movement that controlled much of southern and central Somalia during the second half of 2006. Separately in Mogadishu, three gunmen shot and killed the son of prominent elder of the powerful Hawiye clan, which is dominant in the capital.
“They shot him twice in the back and escaped. He died instantly,” said Hassan Mohamed Afka, a witness. – Agencies
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