Morocco foils terror attacks, arrests 52
Detained terror suspects inspired by Daesh are among the 143 under investigation
Morocco yesterday said that it had arrested 52 suspected terrorists inspired by Daesh and that it had foiled several attacks in the North African kingdom by seizing weapons and bomb-making materials.
It is the largest group arrested in years and the latest of a series of cells that are found plotting attacks inside and outside Morocco.
The kingdom, an ally of the West against terrorism, has been on high alert since 2014, when Daesh took control of large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria.
The 52 arrested were among 143 people investigated in many Moroccan cities and towns, the interior ministry said in a statement.
Many members of the group were planning to carve out a wilayat (a so-called Islamic state) in Morocco, the statement said. They intended to assassinate Moroccan security and military officers and tourists, as well as target prisons and other institutions.
Aformer Somali MP who joined the Al Shabaab group in 2010 was one of the two suicide bombers who killed 13 people near a United Nations and African Union base, the militants announced yesterday.
Car bombs driven by suicide attackers exploded on Tuesday morning near Mogadishu’s airport, one of which went off 200 metres from the base, killing mainly security staff.
Salah Badbado, 53, served in Somalia’s parliament from 2004 until 2010, when he declared at a press conference he was leaving politics to join the Somali Al Qaida affiliate.
“Salah Nooh Esmail known as Salah Badbado was among the braves who have carried out the attack on Halane military base,” the group said in a statement released on the Telegram app and their Andalus radio station.
“He was a former lawmaker but he has repented from the apostasy in the year 2010 when he publicly announced defecting from the apostates,” the Shabaab statement said.
The attack was condemned by the African Union and the United Nations, which said that none of its personnel were among the confirmed dead.
The group’s radio station released an audio message purportedly recorded a few hours before the former MP carried out the attack, in which he is heard announcing suicide strike.
“This suicide task we are going to is for the sake of Allah and it is a religious duty. We have chosen to please Allah and to harm the infidels more than they have harmed the Muslim nation,” the former MP said in the audio message.
Somali security officials were yet to confirm the bomber’s identity early yesterday.
The Al Shabaab group is blamed for a string of bloody assaults in Somalia and neighbouring Kenya, and is fighting to overthrow Mogadishu’s internationally-backed government.
Its fighters were forced out of the capital five years ago but continue to carry out regular attacks on military, government and civilian targets. an imminent