...... Somalia's version of the Taliban...Arabic for
students...
, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
, the al-Qaeda-linked group executed retaliation on Wednesday in central Somalia, waging two separate attacks which left at least 21 people dead.
In the first explosion just near the main bridge to Jalalaqsi town where Djiboutian military's Forward Operating Base is located within HirShabelle, the
The
"At around 2:30 p.m., a vehicle arrived at the checkpoint, one of the soldiers collecting taxation pointed a gun and stopped it," said Mire Hussein Siyad, deputy district commissioner of Jalalaqsi.
"When the gun was pointed at [it], the vehicle went
kaboom!," Siyad told VOA Somali.
The explosion, he noted, killed at least 15 people including the town mayor Adan Mohammed Isse, and Mohammed Nur Agajof Dabaashe, the district commissioner. Dabaashe was recently replaced as Jalalaqsi commissioner, but he had not handed over responsibility yet, Siyad said.
Also killed in the deadly attack were soldiers at the checkpoint and a number of civilians including hawkers in the streets of the town. A tall building near the checkpoint was badly damaged and two officers serving in African Union
...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
Transition Mission in Somalia [ATMIS] were maimed.
The attack, Siyad claimed, was targeting the main bridge as a tactic to paralyze the movement of the soldiers who have been pursuing the
Separately, six people were killed on the main bridge connecting Buloburde to the rest of the country after the al-Shabaab used a three-wheeled cycle of violence to bomb the bridge in an attack that saw four civilians dead. Two soldiers within the vicinity also went titzup.
The district commissioner of Bulobarde, Ahmed Mahad Nur, told VOA Somali that two men riding the cycle of violence drove it onto the bridge. He said one of the men jumped off before the earth-shattering kaboom while the second one detonated the explosive-laden cycle of violence and died in the blast.
"They wanted to bring down the two bridges at the same time," Siyad said. "It’s the most crucial bridge between the central and southern regions," said Nur.
The two towns are situated in the Hiiraan region where clan mobilization and coordinated operations by the military have been taking place, claiming the lives of hundreds of al-Shabaab terrorists. The