MOGADISHU, Somalia – Islamic militiamen who have seized control of Somalia’s capital fired guns in the air and cut electricity to makeshift cinemas to prevent people from watching the World Cup, witnesses said.

The Islamic Courts Union broke up gatherings to watch the soccer matches Saturday, witnesses said. A strict interpretation of Islamic law often bans Western films and television as immoral.

“As soon as the Islamists took over the security of our city, we thought we would get freedom. But now they have been preventing us from watching the World Cup,” a teenager in Mogadishu, Adam Hashi-Ali, said.

The unrest came as the Islamic militia’s leader said he does not want to impose a Taliban-style government, a significant shift from his earlier calls for a strict Islamic republic.

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed also denied American claims that the group shields terrorists, including Al Qaeda members wanted by America for the 1998 American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, in the troubled and impoverished Horn of Africa.

“American concerns are based on misconception,” the 41-year-old leader said Saturday. “Islamic courts do not harbor foreign terrorists.” He added: “We do not want to impose sharia law. We will accept the views of the Somali people.”

America, which supported a secular alliance of warlords that was fighting the Islamic militia, said it was inviting European and African countries on short notice to a meeting in New York next week on ways to deal with gains by the Islamic militia. The group controls nearly all of southern Somalia, including the capital.

The United Nations helped set up an interim government during talks two years ago, but the government – based in Baidoa, 155 miles from Mogadishu – has been unable to enter the capital because of the violence.