MOGADISHU — Somali traders Wednesday evacuated the main market in Mogadishu, a stronghold of the Islamist Shebab rebels, as government and allied forces geared up to flush the Shebab out, residents said.

The Somali troops and their African Union allies started advancing on Bakara market — a major economic lifeline to the war-torn city — on Sunday when they attacked a nearby position of the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab.

The forces have since blocked off access to the area with a series of roadblocks.

The AU force, made up of some 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops, said it would not bombard the market in its attempt to flush out the Shebab, although the force is regularly accused of killing civilians in heavily populated Bakara with mortar fire.

The attempt to rout the Shebab from Bakara is part of a broader sweep, initiated in February, to regain ground in Mogadishu where territory controlled by the transitional government and its African backers was at one point reduced to just a few blocks. They have since recovered slightly less than half the capital.

“We have decided to move out of Bakara market before it is too late. Our property could be in jeopardy if the two sides fight,” said Mohamed Odawa, a trader who was piling the building materials he sells onto several donkey carts and preparing to move them to safety along an alleyway.

He said this was the first time in the two decades of the market’s chaotic existence that traders have ever moved out of Bakara, which was set up in 1991 after the fall of the Siad Barre regime.

“Most of the roads leading to the market have been shut down because of the fighting and no one is coming to shop here anymore,” Odawa added.

Shebab fighters had dug trenches within the market and were taking positions on top of the tallest buildings there, Odawa said, while government forces backed by African Union troops were positioned at several key intersections leading to the market.

“Who can trust leaving their property between two burning fires? There are tanks facing the market and Shebab fighters are committed to defending their positions so what we expect is only devastation,” said Shamso Ismail as she loaded her stocks of clothing onto a cart.

She said hundreds of businesses have been shut down and their contents moved out of the market since Tuesday when tension rose in the area.

A Somali government security official urged the traders to stay put and said that by evacuating the market they were allowing themselves to be “dragged into the war.”

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