Sunday, August 28, 2011
Police spokesman Abdullahi Barise told Reuters security forces found a 4x4 parked between the strategic, government-controlled K4 junction and Mogadishu airport and said the car bomb could have been detonated remotely by mobile phone.
The al-Qaeda-inspired al-Shabaab rebels had been waging a four year insurgency against Western-backed government troops and African Union peacekeepers, before retreating from the capital earlier this month, in a move they said was tactical.
Analysts believe the militants will soon re-emerge in the capital as a guerilla fighting force to carry out high-profile suicide bombings.
The car bomb was found in an area traditionally seen as the safest in the capital, housing several UN agency buildings as well as bases for African Union peacekeepers. Al-Shabaab had been unable to wrest it from government control.
Barise said he suspected al-Shabaab.
"Fixed inside the car was a mobile phone which al-Shabaab usually use as a remote control... perhaps there was also a suicide bomber who got scared and went out of the car," Barise said.
"[The car] was parked along the road behind Sahafi Hotel. Perhaps they were timing it as a convoy headed for the airport," he said.
Female bomber
Al-Shabaab have launched some high profile attacks in the past. The country's interior minister was killed by a veiled female suicide bomber in Mogadishu in June and in February a suicide car bomb killed at least 17 people near a police training camp in the capital.
Somalia has been plagued by violence since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Western agencies, analysts and nearby neighbours say Somalia is used as a safe haven for Islamist militants intent on attacks beyond the Horn of Africa country.
Thousands of Somalis have been returning to Mogadishu since the Islamist rebels announced their withdrawal, but the capital is still suffering from the effects of years of warfare.
Two children were killed on Saturday after they mistakenly played with a landmine in the Karan district of Mogadishu which al-Shabaab had abandoned. Nine people were also wounded, witnesses said.
Masked gunmen also shot dead a former intelligence security official as he was leaving a mosque late on Saturday in Garowe, capital of the semi-autonomous Puntland region, police and a witness said.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, but al-Shabaab have in the past targeted security officials in the region.
Puntland forces have also been battling a group allied to al-Shabaab in the hilly areas near the port city of Bosaso.
The Somali prime minister was in Puntland on Saturday holding talks with officials.
Source: Reuters