A car bomb exploded outside a military base in the Somali capital on Saturday, killing at least eight soldiers and wounding 14 others, and the death toll is expected to rise, police said.
The extremist group al-Shabab, linked to al Qaeda, quickly claimed responsibility through its radio arm, Andalus. The group often targets military sites in Mogadishu and controls much of southern and central Somalia, with little sign of being hampered by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Police Captain Mohamed Hussein shared the death toll from the attack with The Associated Press, and Colonel Ahmed Muse said the attacker struck the April 12 Army Brigade base near the newly reopened sports stadium in the Warta- district. Nabadda.
The reopening of the stadium had been hailed by the Somali president and others as a sign of the Horn of Africa nation’s attempts to rebuild after three decades of conflict and mayhem, though mortar explosions abroad made fans They will duck for cover.
Al-Shabab has been the target of a growing number of US military airstrikes under the administration of President Donald Trump, with at least 63 attacks carried out in the past year alone.
But the Somalia-based extremist group has been resilient, recently upgrading its capacity to make explosives and supporting its deadly work by taxing travelers along the country’s main routes and extorting money from companies.
Women carrying jerry cans of water in the camp for internally displaced persons. Somalia in the throes of a devastating and unprecedented food crisis. Drought has caused crop failures and livestock deaths in Somalia, leading to severe food and water shortages. The brutal conflicts in South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria and Somalia have driven millions of people from their homes and left millions more in need of emergency food. In Somalia, where cholera outbreaks have killed hundreds of people, the impending famine threatens 6.2 million more than half the population. It threatens to bring back the sad reality of 2011, when 260,000 Somalis starved to death. For more than two decades, Somalia has undergone a state of complex humanitarian crisis, with socio-economic, political and environmental factors that have led to widespread conflict, droughts, more recent floods and many other recurring natural and human disasters. In recent days, thousands of Somalis have traveled to Mogadishu desperately seeking food and help. (Photo by Maciej Moskwa / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
While Somalis and returnees from the country’s diaspora continue to invest in renewal, insecurity poses a daily threat and complicates political tensions.
When the prime minister was ousted in a vote of no confidence in parliament last month, a lack of sufficient progress in improving security was cited, along with disagreements over the timing of a crucial national election scheduled for early next year.
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Last month’s vote came just days after the president and regional governments, who have had a tense relationship, agreed to hold a timely election. Somalia had tried to celebrate its first one-person vote, one vote in 50 years, but that prospect is fading.
It is not clear how such a vote can be carried out in areas under al-Shabab’s rule.
