Heavy gunfire shook multiple neighbourhoods of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, on Wednesday night and into Thursday as a deepening dispute over a presidential term extension escalated into armed confrontation between government forces and opposition-aligned fighters. Smoke rose over the city, shops shuttered, and hundreds of families fled their homes as clashes spread — a sudden and sharp reversal in what had been a period of tentative security improvement for the Somali capital.

At the centre of the crisis is President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whose term expired on 15 May. Parliament approved constitutional amendments in March that he says extended his mandate by one year, allowing him to press ahead with plans to hold Somalia's first direct, one-person, one-vote election since 1969. The opposition, organised as the Somali Future Council and including former prime ministers, two sitting federal-state presidents, and former President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, rejects the extension as unconstitutional and has begun referring to Mohamud as a "former president." With no constitutional court in place to arbitrate, the dispute has no clear legal mechanism for resolution.

The immediate trigger was a planned opposition protest scheduled for Thursday. As opposition leaders left the heavily fortified "green zone" near Mogadishu's airport and returned to their city residences in preparation for the demonstration, fighting broke out. Former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said government forces directed "a sustained and indiscriminate military assault" against him lasting more than 20 hours. Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, whose residence near the popular Lido Beach area also came under fire, vowed the opposition would not be intimidated. The government told a different story: Defence Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi accused opposition figures of distributing mortars and heavy weapons across the city, and police described their operations as a response to "heavily armed militias" who had launched mortar attacks on civilian neighbourhoods. A security analyst confirmed to AFP that mortars and heavy-calibre weapons had been used and that there were civilian casualties in some areas. The direct economic cost to businesses was estimated at $3.8 million, though that figure was described as a model-based projection.

International reactions were swift. The United States embassy in Mogadishu called the violence "reckless" and urged all sides to resolve differences through peaceful means. A joint statement from the EU and UN missions and the British embassy described the clashes as "deeply concerning," while the regional bloc IGAD condemned the violence and called for dialogue. The protests themselves did not take place, and fighting had subsided by mid-morning Thursday as both sides entered preliminary negotiations, according to sources cited by AFP.

The crisis reflects a recurring pattern in Somali politics. Somalia has not held a direct national election since the late 1960s and has been wracked by civil war since 1991. Since the state was re-established in 2012, leaders have been chosen through an indirect system of clan elders and political elites — a process critics say is deeply corrupt, with parliamentary seats reportedly changing hands for between $100,000 and $1.3 million. Similar clashes occurred in 2021 when then-President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo overstayed his term before a negotiated settlement was reached. Opposition lawmakers and analysts warn that without genuine consensus, the constitutional framework — already strained by Al-Shabaab's control of large parts of the country — risks fracturing entirely. As one federal MP who boycotted the constitutional amendments put it, the provisional constitution, for all its flaws, was "the only glue holding Somalia together."