"I am very happy to return after a decade. This is my motherland. Our main priority is providing better security," he told reporters at the city's heavily guarded airport according to the Reuters news agency. He added: "I am asking Somalis to avoid shedding any more blood."

This week's fierce artillery and machine gun battles pitted Islamist insurgents, including the hardline al Shabaab group, against government forces and a small African Union peacekeeping mission of troops from Uganda and Burundi.

More than 16,000 civilians have been killed in the two-year-old insurgency, one million people have been driven from their homes, more than a third of the population depend on aid, and large parts of Mogadishu lie empty and destroyed.

The latest violence flared just days after new President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed returned to Mogadishu to try to form an inclusive unity government -- the 15th attempt in 18 years to bring peace to the failed Horn of Africa state.