GROWING violence in the Somali capital is damping down optimism that followed last month’s appointment of the country’s first president in almost a decade. Bus owners pulled their vehicles off the roads in Mogadishu to protest the rising violence after armed militia wrecked several vehicles. Residents said a wave of looting and banditry has hit the capital in the past few days. Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, deputy prime minister and interior minister in the government of the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, was elected president by Somalia’s new parliament last month and was broadly welcomed both at home and abroad. But members of clan-based militia factions – who divided Somalia and have ruled by the gun since 1991 – have gone on the rampage in the past four days, looting dozens of shops and houses in the southwestern suburb of Medina. Some of the city’s most prominent warlords have opposed his appointment. – Reuters