Hundreds of angry Somali football fans and players burned kiosks built in football stadium in the southern key port town of Kismayo over the week end protesting against the use of the stadium as market, residents and Eye witnesses said Monday.

The kiosks were built inside Waamo football stadium after Islamists  in the town on Friday ordered women who sells  the green narcotic leave imported from Kenya and known here as “Qat” to use the Waamo Football stadium as the Qat market.

 

Ali Mohamed a resident in Kismayo said that hundreds of young men angered at the Islamists ruling to change the Stadium into Market burned kiosks and other small shops built in the stadium late on Saturday and Sunday.

 

“We are young men whose hobby is football so to where we will go and play ball if the stadium is changed into market that is some thing un-acceptable” an 18 year old Awil Hassan Farah said during a via phone telephone conversation from Kismayo on Monday.

 

Sheik Hassan Yaqub Ali, information secretary for the Islamist administration in Kismayo told SSPA on Monday that his administration will rethink the matter and take an alternative decision, although he refused to say whether they will totally ban sports or not.

 

Kismayo is a key strategic port town about 500 kilometers south of the capital and it has been under the control of Al Shabab Islamists since September last year.

 

In 2006 Islamists who were controlling much of Somalia killed 2 FIFA world cup fans, banned Somali women from playing sport and also arrested dignitaries including Somali karate and teakwondo federation president Aweys Mohamed Abati.

 

In Mid January 2009 the Moderate Islamic courts union handed the nation’s largest football site Stadium Mogadishu back to the Somali football federation a day after Ethiopian troops vacated from the stadium which was their largest military base in Somalia for two years.

 

Somali football press department

 

Contact: Somalifootballmedia@gmail.com