5 die as Al-Shabab group attacks police in Somalia
NAIROBI, KENYA: An attack by the Al-Shabab extremist group on Wednesday killed five people and wounded 16 on the outskirts of Somalia’s capital, police said.
Somalia’s government said the early morning attack targeted police and checkpoints outside of Mogadishu.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab often targets Mogadishu, and the United Nations and other international observers have warned that the group would take advantage of Somalia’s current election crisis to launch more attacks.
National elections have been delayed for more than a year.
“The terrorists attacked the suburbs of Mogadishu and targeted our police stations and check points,” Abdullahi Nor, the minister, wrote on Twitter.
“Our security defeated the enemy.”
Hunger crisis threatens Somalia’s children: UN Severe drought risks pushing nearly half of Somali children under five into acute malnutrition this year, with hundreds of thousands needing life-saving treatment, the UN warned on Tuesday, calling for urgent action.
“Malnutrition has reached crisis levels,” said Victor Chinyama, head of communications for the UN children’s agency Unicef’s Somalia operations. “The time to act is now,” he told reporters in Geneva via videolink, cautioning that “if you wait until things get worse, or until famine is declared, it may be too late”.
Somalia has been hardest hit as the Horn of Africa region grapples with its worst drought in decades, with the UN warning that 4.1 million people - a quarter of the Somali population - need urgent food aid.