A Somali police officer walks past a wreckage at the scene of a car bomb explosion at a checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia December 28, 2019 |
By Abdi Sheikh, MOGADISHU
Somalia
Islamist
group al Shabaab on Monday claimed responsibility for a bomb blast in Mogadishu
that killed at least 90 people over the weekend while Somalia said a foreign
government that it did not identify helped plan the attack.
The bombing was the deadliest in more than two
years in a country wrecked by nearly three decades of Islamist violence and
clan warfare.
In an audio message, al Qaeda-allied al Shabaab
claimed responsibility for the bombing at the busy Ex-Control checkpoint
northwest of Mogadishu.
“The blast
targeted a convoy of Turkish and Somali forces and they suffered great loss,”
Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab’s spokesman said in the message.
The National Intelligence and Security Agency did
not name the country that it said was involved in the blast. “A foreign country
planned the massacre of the Somalis in Mogadishu on 28 Dec 2019,” it said in a
tweet.
NISA also said it would use assistance from an
unnamed foreign intelligence organization in its investigation.
Rage accused Turkey of “taking all resources of
Somalia” and vowed to continue targeting their personnel in the country.
“We shall always fight...the Turkish who work with
the apostate government of Turkey. We are not against innocent Turkish Muslim citizens,”
he said.
Two of those killed were Turkish nationals. A small
team of Turkish engineers was present at the time of the blast, constructing a
road into the city.
In recent years, Somalia has become an arena for
military and diplomatic rivalry between Turkey and Qatar on one side and Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the other.
Al Shabaab frequently carries out bombings to try
to undermine Somalia’s central government, which is backed by the United
Nations and African Union peacekeeping troops.
The most deadly attack blamed on al Shabaab was in
2017 when a truck bomb exploded next to a fuel tanker in Mogadishu, killing
nearly 600. - Reuters
No comments:
Post a Comment