Somalia bombing kills at least 79 in capital
Fears of resurgent militants heightened
MOGADISHU, Somalia — An explosives-laden truck blew up at a busy intersection in the Somali capital on Saturday and killed at least 79 people, the latest sign of resurgent militant activity in a country plagued by an enduring strain of violent extremism.
A bus carrying university students to their campus was struck by the blast, which left the streets littered with bodies and the mangled frames of vehicles. The attack, which also injured 149 people, was the worst in Somalia in more than two years.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion immediately fell on alShabab, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida that controls large parts of the country and raises considerable funds through local taxation and extortion. Despite intensified American airstrikes and a long-running African Union offensive, the group has carried out deadly attacks not only in Somalia but also in neighboring Kenya and Uganda.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that much progress has been made against combating what has become a very resilient and deadly insurgency,” said Murithi Mutiga, the Horn of Africa project director at the International Crisis Group, a research organization.
The attack — one of several this year in Mogadishu, including a gun battle two weeks ago that killed five people at a wellknown hotel — added to concerns about the abilities of Somali forces as African Union troops begin to withdraw from the Horn of Africa nation.
The African Union peacekeeping operation has been active in Somalia since 2007, but Somali forces are set to assume responsibility for security in May. Six thousand to 7,000 American troops are stationed in Africa, with the largest numbers concentrated in the sub-Saharan region and in the Horn of Africa.
In Somalia, about 600 special
operations forces are fighting al-Shabab alongside local troops.
The Pentagon is weighing whether to sharply reduce or pull out several hundred American troops stationed in West Africa as the first phase of a global reshuffling of U.S. forces. But Defense Department officials said it was less likely that troops would be withdrawn from Somalia because — as Saturday’s attack gruesomely underscores — security in the country remains fraught.
The Pentagon so far this year has carried out 60 drone strikes in Somalia — almost all against al-Shabab militants, with a handful against a branch of the Islamic State. That compares with 47 strikes against al-Shabab in 2018.
The American Embassy in Mogadishu tweeted that the U.S. “continues to stand with Somalis in defeating and degrading terrorism.”
The United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, through his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said “the perpetrators of this horrendous crime must be brought to justice.”
While violent extremist groups such as IS also operate in Somalia, none except al-Shabab have proved capable of repeated, large-scale attacks in the capital. AlShabab has also declared war on pro-IS cells in
Somalia, most of which operate at a distance from Mogadishu.
Al-Shabab, which means “The Youth” in Arabic, have wreaked havoc in Somalia since 2006, when they began pursuing their goal of establishing an Islamic state. In areas that it controls, the group has banned music, movies, the shaving of beards and the internet.
In recent years, al-Shabab have suffered several critical setbacks, including territorial losses, the killing of senior commanders and high -level defections. Yet the group has proved resilient, intensifying its lethal campaign against the Somali government and its allies. Given its control over large areas of the country’s south, it continues to raise considerable revenue and is now manufacturing explosives, according to the United Nations.
Beset by strife and chaos since dictator Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, Somalia has become a byword for chronic state collapse, torn between a stew of rapacious, heavily armed militias and, for a time, linked to piracy on the high seas. Several international attempts to stabilize the country ended in abject failure, and its people have suffered seemingly endless miseries.
In 1993, Somalia’s problems drew the world’s attention after 18 American soldiers were killed in an operation aimed at capturing the powerful Somali warlord Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, as depicted in the film “Black Hawk Down.”
For years, Somalia was run by warlords and weak transitional administrations, and it did not take the first steps toward recovery until 2012, when a U.N.-backed federal government emerged in Mogadishu.
With a population of about 12.3 million, Somalia continues to rank among the poorest nations in the world. While no longer considered a failed state, it remains in a fragile phase of recovery with a debt-laden economy and soaring unemployment.
Over the last two years, Somalia has also emerged as a central battleground between Persian Gulf monarchies competing for power and profits in the Horn of Africa. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have each provided weapons or military training to favored factions.
The country is expected to hold elections next year, but a political stalemate between the central government and federal states has dampened the prospect of change.
Independent terrorism specialists said the attacks represented a dangerous escalation of violence.
“It clearly demonstrates that Shabab has the capability and the will to kill civilians, terrorize the population, and destabilize the modicum of governance in the country that does exist,” said Colin Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a research organization.
The government, Mr. Clarke said, “continues to flounder, unable to bring security to the war-torn capital.”
In January, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack on a luxury hotel and office complex in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, that killed more than 20 people. In July, militants killed 26 people in a hotel in the southern port city of Kismayo, including a prominent Canadian-Somali journalist, Hodan Nalayeh.
The same month, a suicide attack by the group fatally wounded the mayor of Mogadishu, Abdirahman Omar Osman, a British-Somali citizen. And on a single day in September, al-Shabab targeted an American base in Somalia and a group of Italian peacekeeping troops.
Al-Shabab are also suspected in one of the deadliest terrorist strikes in recent years, a double-truck bombing in the heart of Mogadishu that killed nearly 600 people in October 2017.
Saturday’s blast occurred just before 8 a.m. at Ex-control Junction, an intersection that connects Mogadishu to southern and southwestern Somalia.
Mogadishu’s mayor, Omar Mohamud Mohamed, said at a news conference that many of the wounded were students. President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ordered the government to put all of its resources toward supporting the wounded and families of the dead.