Merchants evacuate stores as battles isolate Mogadishu’s Bakaara market
As Somali forces claim to be isolating Al Shabaab strongholds and economic sources, merchants on Wednesday started to evacuate their stores at the Bakaara market in Mogadishu.
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Ahmed Mohamoud, a trader who has a big store selling essential food stuffs, said he moved from the market after fighting deteriorated and customers could not reach his business.
“When a customer wants to make shopping or buy other things at Bakaara, it takes several hours to travel to the market, because you must travel through two regions (Lower Shabelle and Middle Shabelle) before reaching at your destination (Bakaara),” Mohamoud explained.
Furthermore, a shopper might be in danger traveling to or shopping at the market as mortar shells, the bullets of tanks and stray bullets rain down indiscriminately while fighting between pro-government forces and Al Shabaab is underway near the market, according to the businessmen.
He said he managed to evacuate all of his movable belongings from the market before it turned into a real war zone where no one can live.
“Now, I set up new big store in the government controlled Hamarweyne to keep on my daily work and help my own family and my parents,” he noted, adding that the government-dominated district is calmer and more peaceful than Bakaara.
Bakaara is the biggest market in the seaside capital and Somalia in general, according to the trader.
He said continued fighting around Bakaara will have a negative impact on Somalia’s economy and directly impact the people who used to earn their daily living there.
“Any Somali [who] wants to buy something used to go there, because everything except life is available at the market of Bakaara,” Moahamoud explained.
Despite that, the Somali government believes that the market is an economic source for the militants as they have military bases inside it.
In the past one or two years, repetitive battles between pro-government forces and Al Shabaab in Mogadishu have made it much harder for businessmen and costumers to access the capital’s economic heart, Bakaara market.
After three months of combat operations by Somali forces backed by African Union peacekeepers against the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab, the market looks to be isolated.
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