MOGADISHU: As many as five people were killed and 11 others, including a regional governor, injured in a suicide attack in southern Somalia on Tuesday, reported Arab News.
A police commander told AFP that a vehicle laden with explosives plowed into a guest house hosting the government officials in Bardera, 450 kilometers west of the capital Mogadishu, said area police commander Hussein Adan. “The explosion destroyed most parts of the building while five security guards died in the blast,” Adan said further.
As many as 11 people, including the governor, Ahmed Bulle Gared, were injured in the incident, he added.
However, there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, though the militant group Al-Shabab remains a potent force in the troubled Horn of Africa nation despite efforts to degrade its leadership. A witness of the Tuesday’s attack, Mohamud Saney, said they had “never heard anything as big as the explosion.” “It shook the earth like an earthquake,” he added.
Somalia’s Al-Shabab
The militant group, Al-Shabab has been waging a bloody insurgency against the central government in the country for about 15 years. In the recent months, the Somali army and local clan militias have retaken chunks of territory from the militants in an operation backed by the United States airstrikes and ATMIS, an African Union force.
Despite the gains by the pro-government forces, the militants have continued to demonstrate the capability to strike back with lethal force against military and civil targets. In the deadliest attack by the group since the offensive was launched in 2022, 121 people were killed in two car bomb explosions at the Education Ministry in Mogadishu in October.
According to the UN, 2022 was the deadliest year for civilians in Somalia since 2017, largely because of an increase in mass-casualty attacks by the militant group. Although pushed out of Mogadishu and other main urban centers more than a decade ago, Al-Shabab remains entrenched in parts of rural central and southern Somalia.
