Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Fifteen people were killed in the first major assault on the United Nations by Somali Islamist militants in years, including four foreign security staff, local guards and insurgent fighters, the Somali government said on Wednesday.
Providing details on the death toll, Interior Minister Abdikarim Hussein Guled
told reporters: "So far we have confirmed four UNDP foreign staff who
were responsible for security, four Somali guards and seven militants."
A car bomb exploded outside the gate of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) base and attackers then ran inside and opened fire on
security guards, U.N. sources said. The al Qaeda-linked Islamist group
al Shabaab claimed responsibility.
The African Union
peacekeeping force, which sent soldiers and armored vehicles to the
site, said the compound was under control of friendly troops after a gun
battle that witnesses said lasted more than 90 minutes.
Militants have launched grenade strikes and similar low-level attacks on U.N. bases in the past, but no assault of this scale.
It was the first notable attack on U.N. premises by al Shabaab since
they were driven out of Mogadishu in fighting with AU and Somali
government forces about two years ago.
One U.N. official said
some Western nations that have been keen to support the Western-leaning
government elected last year had played down dangers posed by al Shabaab
and its ability to infiltrate the security forces and attack the
capital.
"This is part of the consequence of over-optimism in
some Western nations that has overshadowed the need to look at deeper
problems before rolling out any kind of U.N. mission," said the
official, who follows Somalia closely. He said the government had not
done enough to overhaul its security forces.
Britain opened an
embassy in Mogadishu's fortified airport in April but said the militant
threat remained. U.N. agencies have only recently started building up
offices and international staff in Somalia after some relative security
improvements.
LOCKDOWN
The UNDP compound is located just
a few hundred meters (yards) from the airport, which serves as the main
base for the African Union peacekeeping force battling insurgents
across southern Somalia.
A U.N. spokesman told Reuters that
staff in a neighboring building were in lockdown and said heavy
exchanges of gunfire rung out for about 90 minutes. The Islamist group
also said fighting lasted more than an hour after the attack was
launched.
"Inside the compound are several clueless foreigners
who were lulled into a false sense of security by a strong
disinformation campaign," al Shabaab said on its Twitter feed
@HSMPRESS1, before its fighters apparently lost the battle.
There was no immediate confirmation from the United Nations regarding
how many foreign and local staff were in the building at the time,
though one official said it was normally staffed by dozens of employees.
Early witness reports had indicated a suicide bomber had blown himself up, and subsequent accounts referred to a car bomb.
The Somali government condemned the attack and offered "deepest sympathy to all victims" without giving details.
"Today all Somalia stands shoulder to shoulder with UNSOM," Prime
Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid said on Twitter, referring to the new
U.N. Somalia assistance program UNSOM.
Bystanders reported
several smaller blasts inside the compound during the gunfight, though
it was not immediately clear whether these were from the gunmen blowing
themselves up or from other explosives.
The raid appeared to be a
copycat of a strike on Mogadishu's law courts in April, when militant
gunmen detonated suicide vests during a gunbattle with security forces.
AU forces and government troops drove Islamist al Shabaab rebels out of
the coastal capital in 2011, but militants have kept up guerrilla-style
attacks from rural bases.
The overthrow of a dictator in 1991
plunged Somalia into two decades of violent turmoil, first at the hands
of clan warlords and then Islamist militants, who have steadily lost
ground since 2011 under pressure from the AU military offensive.
(Additional reporting to Tom Miles in Geneva and Drazen Jorgic in Nairobi; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Mark Heinrich)