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Several Killed in Two Somalia Attacks | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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A soldier guards the street after a suicide car attack near the Defense Ministry in Mogadishu on April 9, 2017. Mohamed ABDIWAHAB / AFP


A government official was killed by a bomb planted in his car in Somalia’s capital on Monday and a suicide bomber struck a military training camp, leaving at least three soldiers dead, a day after the army chief escaped an attack on his convoy.

No one claimed responsibility for the car bomb, but al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab militant group said it was behind the suicide bombing at the camp, the largest in the country.

“The car bomb killed a junior government worker,” the spokesman for Mogadishu’s mayor, Abdifatah Omar Halane, said.

“The suicide bomber was stopped at the main entrance and he blew himself up. Three soldiers died and several others were wounded,” said soldier Abdukadir Farah, who was inside the camp at the time of the attack.

Farah said a meeting of military officials was underway at the camp in the south of the capital.

But it was not clear if army chief Ahmed Mohamed Jimale was among them, he said.

Military official Lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Abdirahman told AFP the attacker had been “disguised as a member of the military” to gain access to the training camp.

The attack was claimed by the Shabaab extremist group, which said that “tens” of people had been killed.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a convoy carrying Jimale, who was named to the post last week by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmajo.

The Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the military chief had “narrowly escaped” the blast. A senior army official separately said the attack left at least 10 people dead.

Farmajo, who took office in February, also named new police and intelligence chiefs in a speech Thursday in which he declared a fresh war against Al-Shabaab militants.