Originally -and for many centuries- there were only fishing activities in the beach of the small coastal village now called Merca.
Porto di Merca The port was a small fishing inlet in the early 1900s, but in the 1920s the Italian
governor De Vecchi created a "real' port installation, called officially in
Italian Porto di Merca, with a dock for ships for
Italian Somalia exports of bananas. In the late 1920s and mainly in the 1930s there was a colony of
Italian settlers in the port-city of
Merca, that was greatly improved. The Port of Merca was the second in
Italian Somalia and was nicknamed "port of bananas" (porto bananiero) because from there was exported in those years the huge production of Somali bananas toward
Italy and
Europe. In the city of
Merca there was a huge economical development in the 1930s, due mainly to the growing commerce of the port of Merca connected by small railway to the farm area of
Genale and
Villabruzzi. During
WWII some damages were done by the British to Merca and the port. The banana commerce continued in the first years after the war, mainly during the decade (1950-1960) of Italian Trusteeship of Somalia. ===Merca port after
WW2=== The port had a minor activity in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The Port of Merca was destroyed during the civil war in the 1990s, with all the remaining facilities for exporting bananas. The port of Merca (and the city) was abandoned by government forces and captured by
Al-Shabaab in February 2016. It was recaptured by the
Somali National Army along with
African Union troops, a few days later. A small battle was fought in which a Somali soldier, several militants, and four civilians died. ==See also==