SOMALIA – No fewer than five (5) people have been killed and eleven (11) wounded, including a governor, in a suicide bombing in southwestern Somalia on Tuesday.
Though, no group has claimed the attack yet, but there are speculations on the Shebab, an al-Qaeda affiliated group that regularly carries out suicide bombings in the poor and volatile Horn of Africa country.
“A suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into a guesthouse in Bardera where government officials were staying,” said Hussein Adan, a police commander in the town in the Gedo region.
The officials included Gedo governor Ahmed Bulle Gared and several military commanders, he added.
“The explosion destroyed most of the building and five security personnel were killed,” Mr Adan said, adding that 11 other people were injured, including the governor, without giving further details on the severity of the injuries.
“We have never heard anything as big as the explosion this morning, it shook the earth like an earthquake,” Mohamud Saney, a witness, told AFP.
Read Also: Girl Shoots Sister Dead In Texas
The Shebab rebels have been fighting the internationally-backed federal government since 2007. Driven out of the country’s main cities in 2011-2012, they remain firmly entrenched in large rural areas.
In the deadliest Al-Shabaab attack since the offensive was launched last year, 121 people were killed in two car bomb explosions at the education ministry in Mogadishu in October.
The UN last month said that 2022 was the deadliest year for civilians in Somalia since 2017, largely because of an increase in mass-casualty attacks by the jihadist group.
Read Also: 23-Year-Old Technical Student Dies After Jumping From A Rooftop
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, who returned to power in May 2022, has promised them “total war”.
