Somalia’s new army chief escaped a car bombing Sunday that killed at least five people in a bloody response by Shabaab militants to the president’s declaration of war on the group.
A suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into Mohamed Jama Irfid’s convoy near the defence ministry in Mogadishu, just days after he was named to the top army job Thursday by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.
“Initial information indicates that the military chief has narrowly escaped the attack,” the Shabaab said in a statement published on the website of the jihadist group’s Andalus radio station.
An AFP reporter saw five dead bodies — those of four civilians and a soldier — and body parts scattered across the scene of the explosion after the attack around midday.
Security forces blocked off the entire district around the defence ministry.
Security official Ali Abdirahman confirmed that the army chief and other senior military leaders who had been in the convoy were unhurt, but he added that a passenger bus had been passing at the time of the blast.
“There have been fatalities but I don’t know how many,” he told AFP.
No official toll was immediately available, but witnesses and local residents suggested more than five may have been killed.
“I saw five soldiers being carried onto a pickup truck and some of them seemed to be dead,” said witness Abdukadir Moalim.
Another witness, Abdirahman Isa, said the minibus that had been passing the scene “was completely destroyed and there were several dead bodies, but I could not count because they were completely smashed and burned in the blast.”
The attack was the latest deadly incident in days, after a car bomb in Mogadishu left seven dead Wednesday, a landmine killed 19 Thursday and a mortar attack left three dead on Friday.
While the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab have lost large swathes of territory and were forced out of Mogadishu by African Union troops in 2011, they continue to strike in the capital and countryside.
Widely known by his nickname Farmajo, the president took office in February and faces a struggle to improve security in the deeply unstable Horn of Africa nation.
Bomb attacks have become a regular and bloody feature of daily life in the capital since the Shabaab were forced out of Mogadishu six years ago.
Farmajo had told a press conference on Thursday that he was declaring a new war on the Shabaab and offering an amnesty to militants who surrendered within 60 days.
The rest, he said, would “face the consequences”.
“I am announcing a state of war in the country and call on the public to stand with the national army to help fight terrorists,” said Farmajo.
“We request you put down your arms and call on you to come out of them and join the development of your people. We promise you will get good care if you join us,” he said.
“We will not wait for the violent elements to continue blowing up people, we must attack them and liberate areas they are stationed.”
The fragile central government continues to have international backing as well as the 22,000-strong AU force.
But the Shabaab have vowed to defeat Farmajo’s new administration, promising a “merciless” war against him.
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