At least seven people have died and ten others have been injured early this Saturday due to a car bomb explosion at a checkpoint east of Parliament and the Presidential Palace in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu.
The detonation, which occurred around 09:00 a.m. local time, killed passersby near the vehicle, police spokesman Mohamed Abdishakur reported to Bloomberg, and has also caused major material damage.
The vehicle, initially driven by a suspected suicide bomberAccording to Voice of America sources, it exploded near a security checkpoint at the Sayidka intersection. The driver, chased by the police officers, ignored warnings to get out of the vehicle and decided to detonate the cargo he was carrying.
The perpetrator was trying to pass through one of the security checkpoints in the area in the direction of the front door of the palace, but the guards at the post opened fire.
These shots caused the dispersion of people Y minimized the number of victims when the car exploded, as Nur Adam Ali, a witness to the scene, explained to Globe Live Media.
Al Shabaab has claimed authorship
The suspicions have been confirmed. Efe reports that Al Shabab has claimed responsibility for the attack, produced during this transition that the country is going through until elections are held, which were scheduled for February 8. The terrorist group has already perpetrated several attacks in this period.
Somalia lives in a state of war and chaos since 1991, when the dictator was overthrown Mohamed Siad Barre, which left the country without an effective government and in the hands of Islamist militias and warlords.
Al Shabab, an organization affiliated since 2012 to the terrorist network Al Qaeda, controls part of the center and south of that country in the horn of Africa and intends to establish a Islamic State of Wahhabi court (ultraconservative).
Mogadishu often suffers from the attacks of this jihadist group that committed its largest massacre in October 2017, when the explosion of two truck bombs in the capital caused the death of more than 500 people, although the group never officially recognized the authorship of this attack.