Somali Islamists arrested 35 people and shot in the air to disperse a protest in Kismayo against the new administration at the key port it seized last month, witnesses said on Saturday.
Scores of people took to the streets late on Friday, burning tyres and blocking roads, after the Islamists appointed a new governor, mayor and heads of the airport, port and the city’s overall security.
The protesters said the Islamists, who captured Somalia’s third city on September 25, had not shared power fairly when picking the port’s new leadership.
”We are angry about how this administration has been set up,” said Barre Ahmed, an official of the Juba Valley Alliance, an independent authority that controlled the region around Kismayo before the Islamists took it over.
The Islamists said the protesters were political trouble-makers.
”We have arrested 35 people. These were not regular demonstrators, they have a political agenda to undermine our administration,” said Abdul Kadir Jibril, one of the Islamist Court officials charged with security in Kismayo.
The protests were the fourth since the Islamists seized the port. Past demonstrations have also been against the Islamists’ ban on the popular leafy stimulant khat and on cinemas.
The Islamists have prohibited the mild stimulant, usually traded by women and mostly chewed by men in Somalia.
The Islamists, who control the capital Mogadishu, seized Kismayo without firing a shot, expanding their control over southern Somalia and effectively flanking the interim government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa, on three sides.
The United Nations refugee agency said on Friday more than 2 000 Somalis have fled across the border to Kenya over the last two days after reports of advances by Islamist forces on several southern towns this week.
About 30 000 people from Somalia have sought refuge in Kenya since the beginning of the year. The UN agency said their continued arrivals could soon overwhelm existing refugee camps.
The interim government, the 14th attempt at effective central rule since the 1991 ouster of a dictator, regards Kismayo’s capture as breaching a ceasefire agreement reached at peace talks in Sudan. — Reuters