Explosion kills 4 outside busy hotel in Somalia’s capital

Somalia

Scene of the bomb attack
Photo: BBC/Reuters

At least four people were killed when an explosion went off outside a busy hotel in Somalia’s capital on Thursday, followed by gunfire, police and rescue services said.

“So far we have carried four dead and five others injured from the blast scene outside Hotel Wehliye.

“The death toll may rise,” Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Amin ambulances, told Reuters.

On Oct. 14 , 2017, a massive blast caused by a truck bombing in Mogadishu, the capital of
Somalia, killed at least 587 people and injured 316.

The truck was detonated after it was stopped; the actual target of the attack is believed to have been a secure
compound housing international agencies and troops.

Though no organisation claimed responsibility, officials stated that a key member of the cell that carried it
out told them Al-Shabaab was responsible.

The attack is the deadliest in Somalia‘s history, surpassing the 2011 Mogadishu bombing that killed 100 people,
and the deadliest in Africa.

It is also the third-deadliest act of terrorism in recorded history, surpassed only by the
2007 Yazidi communities bombings and the Sept.11, 2001 attacks.

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In response to the bombings, Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed declared three days of mourning.

During the summer of 2011, the East African region faced a drought and shortage of food supplies, particularly
in the Somali region, forcing tens of thousands of people to cross the borders into Ethiopia and Kenya for
refuge.

Al-Shabaab, a jihadist fundamentalist group designated as a terrorist organization by several countries,
threatened to expel the aid groups working in the area before the African Union’s AMISOM troops took action to
force the al-Shabaab fighters out of the region.

In July 2010, al-Shabaab also claimed responsibility for a bombing in Kampala, Uganda, in retaliation for
Uganda’s support to, and presence in, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

In 2017, Somalia was continuing to suffer its worst drought in 40 years, with climatic catastrophe compounded by
war and poor governance.

Al-Shabaab banned humanitarian assistance in areas it controls, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to choose
between starvation or brutal punishment.

The U.S. had a military involvement in Somalia until 1994, and had then withdrawn.

Earlier in 2017 the U.S. designated Somalia a “zone of active hostilities” (allowing it to apply looser rules and
oversight concerning the authorisation of drone strikes and ground operations),and the deployment of regular U.S.
forces to Somalia was again authorized.

This saw America’s ground forces in Somalia increase from about 50 in 2016 to 400 in 2017.

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