At least 15 people were reportedly murdered in two blasts that targeted officials on Wednesday in the town of Mahas in the central Hiran area, roughly 300 kilometres north of the city of Mogadishu.
The town’s mayor, Mumin Mohamed Halane, said on state television that two car bomb blasts were responsible for the attacks and that they were directed at both his home and the household of Mahamed Abukar Jacfar, a member of the federal parliament.
Al-Shabab, an islamist militant organisation, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which it said were directed against the Mahas government facility.
In the Eastleigh neighbourhood of Nairobi, Kenya, a police officer from that country stops a man who is leaving work after the daily dusk-to-dawn curfew has begun.
Residents of the area who spoke with VOA over the phone called the attack “one of the greatest explosions” they had ever heard.
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Government authorities from both the municipal and federal levels of government condemned the attack.
The strike on Wednesday, according to Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimu, a federal parliamentarian chosen from the area, demonstrates that the “enemy,” or al-Shabab extremists, have given up and are now only capable of bomb attacks.
According to him, the primary goal of al-Qaeda’s attacks on Shabab is to impede the advancements being made in the current liberation effort and recent victories.
He urged the public to continue assisting the military until al-Shabab was defeated.
Large swaths of territory, primarily in the state of Hirshabelle, have lately been freed from the Islamist organisation by Somali government forces with the assistance of local clan militias. Since 2007, Al-Shabab has fought the Somalian government and African Union forces.
Last year, the militants became the target of an “all-out battle” launched by the president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Since then, Al-Shabab has carried out fatal bombings in the city of Mogadishu, including a double attack on the education ministry of Somalia that resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people, primarily civilians.
