Roadside bomb kills at least six outside Mogadishu
Latest attack by Al-Shabab spreads fear among Somalis
MOGADISHU: A roadside bomb has killed six people and injured three others on Sunday, said a Somali police officer.
Col. Ahmed Nur said the bomb struck a minibus carrying farmers near Bal’ad town just north of the capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday. The victims included mostly women farmers.
There is no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing in an area that has seen clashes between government forces and fighters with the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab extremist group.
The area outside the Somali capital is dominated by insurgents who have defied public protests to end years of violence, residents and the army said.
Al-Shabab carries out guerrilla attacks across large parts of southern and central Somalia.
Sunday’s bombing hit a minibus in Daniga village about 40 km to the northwest of Mogadishu.
“We heard a huge crash today and we went to the scene, we saw a ruined minibus and at least seven dead bodies, mostly women. We could not identify some people, they were just pieces of human flesh,” farmer Nur Abdullahi told Reuters by phone.
“We are scared,” Abdullahi said “Hundreds of masked militants are everywhere and we anticipate the government will attack here. They also planted mines everywhere and today we pack our clothes to flee.”
An army officer said the death toll might be higher.
“We know the minibus left Afgooye (town) this morning and it was carrying farmers, mostly women,” said Capt. Isa Osman of the Somali National Army.
“It was carrying more than 10 people. We cannot get many details because the area is not controlled by government.”
After Oct. 14 attack, the government promised new offensives against the insurgency.
Civil war
Somalia has been riven by civil war since 1991, when clan warlords overthrew a dictator then turned on each other.
The roadside bombing comes little over a week after a massive truck bombing in Mogadishu killed at least 358 people in the country’s worst attack.
Somalia’s president has told troops to prepare for a “state of war” and new offensive against Al-Shabab.
A truck packed with explosives blew up in Hodan on Oct. 14, destroying some 20 buildings in the bustling commercial district, leaving scores of victims burned beyond recognition.
Several experts told AFP the truck was probably carrying at least 500 kilos of explosives.
“The latest number of casualties 642 (358 dead, 228 injured, 56 missing). 122 injured ppl flown to Turkey, Sudan & Kenya,” Somali Minister of Information Abdirahman Osman tweeted.
The figures mark a sharp increase in the toll, which earlier this week was put at 276 dead and 300 wounded.
The attack has overwhelmed Somalia’s fragile health system, and allies from the US, Qatar, Turkey and Kenya have sent planeloads of medical supplies as well as doctors, with all except the US also evacuating some of the wounded.
Death tolls are notoriously difficult to establish in Mogadishu, with families often quickly taking victims away to be buried.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility, but Al-Shabaab, a militant group aligned with Al-Qaeda, carries out regular suicide bombings in Mogadishu in its bid to overthrow Somalia’s internationallybacked government.
The group has a history of not claiming attacks whose scale provokes massive public outrage.
Already more than 100 unidentified people have been buried who were burned beyond recognition.
While the rapid burial is partly due to Islamic culture, the Somali government also has no proper morgue nor the capability to carry out forensic tests to identify the victims.
Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed vowed Wednesday to step up the war against Al-Shabaab, saying that the attack showed “that we have not done enough to stop Shabaab.”
“If we don’t respond to this now, the time will surely come when pieces of flesh from all of us are being picked up off the ground. We need to stand up together and fight Al-Shabaab who continue massacring our people,” he said.
However it was unclear what the Somalian president — who came into office eight months ago also vowing to eliminate Al-Shabaab — planned to do to stop the militants from carrying out such attacks.