Car and suicide bombings and protection by armed soldiers are all in a day's work for the Leicester man leading the fire service in a troubled African capital.
Abdulahi Mohamed, known as Saneey, returned to the Somalian capital, Mogadishu, last week to resume his role as director of the fire and emergency services in the city, which has seen two decades of civil strife.
Saneey, 44, from Belgrave, Leicester, said goodbye to his wife and six children before flying back on Thursday to take the helm of the city's fledgling firefighting force, which has only been operating for about a year.
"It's a tough life," he said. "I have to be there at any incident, day or night, and we need to have soldiers protecting us. It's a dangerous existence and we deal with everything from car bombs to house blazes.
"The firefighters arrived within 10 minutes at the home of a single mother which was on fire. They managed to stop it spreading.
"She was crying because we had come to help – the first time she had such help in 20 years."
Mogadishu has been a major battleground in a civil war which has ravaged Somalia since 1991 and the overthrow of President Siad Barre.
Since then, Somalia has seen clan-based warlords, Islamist militants and its neighbours all battling for control.
Although the city is now under the control of an internationally-recognised transitional government, it is still the target for terror attacks – the latest car-bombing, on September 7, claimed 15 lives.
Saneey fled the city in 1991 before moving to Holland. Since 2001 he has called Leicester his home. But a visit to Mogadishu in 2010, while working for a charity, brought him into contact with the city's mayor and he discovered how much a fire service was needed.
He said: "There was a fire in the market and they didn't have any fire engines to tackle it, people were throwing buckets of water on it.
"Some people died and a lot of businesses and homes were destroyed. I started thinking about how to get some fire engines and spoke to the mayor and it started from there."
He returned to Leicester and worked with the Iqra Aid Trust to raise money to help launch a fire service for the city. He said: "We went to the Clock Tower to collect money and, over time, we raised £15,000 to send a fire engine to Somalia.
"I was there in November last year and it arrived in December. I was appointed to my position in January and came back home to my family last month."
He underwent just a few weeks of training in the UK and in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, before passing on his training skills to the 53 members of the city's fire service.
Last week, Saneey, who represented Somalia in the 800m and 1500m races at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, took delivery of a donated former Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service fire engine. The Denis Saber appliance donated by Leicestershire fire service will boost Mogadishu's fleet from three to four engines – to cover a population of three million.
But Saneey admitted his long- distance commuting is hard on his wife, son and five daughters, who are aged between three and 16.
He said: "I won't be back home now until Christmas for four weeks before going back to Mogadishu.
"It's tough on my wife and kids, but they are happy that I'm there helping people, it makes sense to them because it's humanitarian work.
"I just want to help make life better than it was."
