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Africa Horn

Islamists Say Somali Vote was 'Enemy Project'

2012-09-12

[An Nahar] Somalia's Islamists on Tuesday dismissed as illegitimate the vote which saw outsider Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud elected president. "The process in which Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud was chosen was run by the enemies of Somalia," Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage, front man of the al-Qaeda-linked Shebab, told Agence La Belle France Presse. "Nothing personal, but the whole process is like an enemy project," he said. Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, a 56-year-old university lecturer with ties to the Somali branch of the Moslem Brüderbund, Al-Islah ("Reform" in Arabic), unexpectedly defeated incumbent Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in a run-off on Monday. The president was elected by newly-designated politicians as part of a U.N.-backed process to end a transitional period and strengthen institutions in a nation which has not had an effective central government in two decades. The vote took place under tight security in the capital Mogadishu and comes amid intensifying regional military efforts to flush out the Shebab from their remaining strongholds. "We will only recognize a process run by Somalis and not manipulated by Æthiopia, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti and the west," Rage said, listing the countries that have troops fighting the Shebab in Somalia. "Hassan is operating under a constitution drafted by the enemies of Somalia, who have a nefarious geopolitical agenda, especially neighboring countries," he said. Outgoing president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was a top leader in the Islamist movement that gave birth to the Shebab until he joined the U.N.-brokered political process and won the presidential vote in January 2009. The Shebab have since accused him of being a Western puppet supporting the country's invasion by "Christian crusaders" and have repeatedly targeted his administration in suicide kabooms.

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Africa Horn

32 Dead in Mog Hotel Attack Include 6 Somali Lawmakers

2010-08-25

[Pak Daily Times] Somali Islamic exemplars disguised as government soldiers went on a shooting rampage in a Mogadishu hotel on Tuesday, killing 32 people including six MPs before blowing themselves up. Follows up yesterday's story... The brazen attack by two rebels from the al Qaeda-inspired Shebab movement a stone's throw from the presidential palace marked a new escalation on the second day of clashes in the capital that had already left 29 civilians dead. "Thirty-two people died in this ambush. Six of them are members of the Somali parliament and four are Somali government civil servants," Deputy Prime Minister Abdirahman Haji Adan Ibbi told reporters. "The 20 others are innocent bystanders who died in this horrible incident." An AFP reporter who managed to enter the Hotel Mona compound said the doors of every single room and even the toilets had been smashed open by the two attackers. Officials visiting the scene of the carnage held their noses because of the stench of burned flesh and smoke. Witnesses and hotel staff said the attackers were wearing government security uniforms and rubbed out security guards at the gate to the compound as they rushed into the three-storey building. "They rained gunfire on everybody. Nobody stood a chance. I was lucky because they aimed at me but I jumped out of the window and survived," hotel employee Adan Mohamed told AFP. "People were screaming, there was total panic. When they decided they had finished killing everybody, they climbed to the balcony and started opening fire on government forces outside the hotel," he added. One government soldier who took part in the fighting and refused to give his name said one of the bombers detonated his boom jacket on the balcony when he saw they were surrounded. "These two guys were on the balcony, close together, shouting holy shit! Allahu Akbar. It seems one of them failed to detonate his vest but the other did and that probably killed both of them," he said. "One of them was blown to pieces, only the head remains. The other one's body is completely burned, he is all black," the soldier added. Shabaab front man Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage took credit for the attack during a phone press conference. "Our commando units carried out this attack," he said. The bloodbath at Hotel Mona, which lies in the small area firmly under government control, came on the second day of a deadly battle in the naked city. The embattled transitional government and the UN condemned the attack.

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Africa Horn

Somalia blames al-Qaeda-linked group for attack

2009-12-05

[Al Arabiya Latest]The Somali government on Friday blamed al-Qaeda-linked militants for a suicide bombing that killed 22 people in the capital, as government officials buried three Cabinet ministers killed in the attack. Somalia's al-Shabab, the most powerful militant group in the African country, said it was not responsible for the attack, but government officials said the group denied responsibility only because so many Somalis had been angered by the bombing. The bombing Thursday ripped through a university graduation ceremony at an upscale hotel in Mogadishu, killing medical students, doctors, journalists and three government ministers. The bombing has also killed Al Arabiya cameraman al-Hassan al-Zubeir. "The investigation is still under way to uncover evidence of who might have been behind the attack, but we already know that this is the work of al-Qaeda through its affiliated group al-Shabab, because of the nature of the attack and the tactics used," said Security Minister Abdullahi Mohammed Ali. "We have heard about that tragedy from the media. On behalf of the Shabab, we are not in any way involved in that incident," top spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage said in a statement. He blamed the government for the bombing, an accusation vehemently denied by Somali officials. Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for past suicide attacks in Somalia, and has never denied carrying out an attack. But militant groups tend to distance themselves from bombings that kill large numbers of civilians -- attacks that could draw popular outrage. The government buried the three ministers killed in the blast, holding a ceremony at a Mogadishu hospital heavily guarded by government forces and African Union peacekeepers fearful that militants might try to attack the proceedings. The president and prime minister of the weak, U.N.-backed government attended.

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