Somalia twin suicide bombings toll rises to 20

The number of people killed in twin suicide bomb attacks on two restaurants in Somalia’s southern city of Baidoa has risen to 20 and another 40 people were injured, a local hospital official said yesterday.

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in restaurants in Baidoa on Saturday evening.

Islamist militant group Shebaab claimed responsibility for the attack.

A spokesman for the group said it had targeted the restaurants because they were frequented by government troops.

The attacks followed a US air strike on Friday against Shebaab militants in Haradere, a district in Galmudug region.

Shebaab wants to topple Somalia’s Westernbacked central government and impose its own rule based on a strict interpretation of Shariah.

“We received 20 dead people and about 40 others injured from the twin blasts of yesterday,” Abdifatah Hashi, the general manager of Baidoa city hospital told reporters yesterday.

Yesterday, a year to the day on which suspected Shebaab bombings killed more than 500 people in Mogadishu, a Somali military court carried out the execution of a man convicted of being involved in the attacks.

“The Somali military court executed today Hasan Aden Isak who was a Shebaab member and accused of being behind the October bombing,” the court’s deputy prosecutor Mumin Hussein Abdullahi told state-run Radio Mogadishu.

Shebaab never claimed responsibility for the attacks which were the deadliest since the group began its insurgency in 2007.