Why Mogadishu clashes are deepening Somalia’s political crisis again

Key points

• Mogadishu, Somalia – Mustafa, 33, dreads election time in Somalia.
• He drives a bajaj — a three-wheeled taxi — and says that when tensions rise, as they always do when polls are near, the whole city feels it, and drivers like him are among the first.
• On Wednesday, he was passing through the Hawl Wadaag district when heavy gunfire between government and opposition forces erupted all around him.
• “I couldn’t even think.
• Everyone was shouting and running for their lives, and we all fled from the bullets,” he told Al Jazeera.