Arrests made over deadly twin blasts in Baidoa town as death toll rises

Hiiraan Online
Tuesday March 1, 2016

MOGADISHU (HOL) – Security forces arrested seven people in connection with Sunday’s deadly attacks on restaurants in Baidoa town as death toll has risen to 30, officials said on Monday.

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The simultaneous attacks on two adjacent restaurants in Baidoa town occurred after a car bomb was detonated outside a crowded restaurant before a suicide bomber blew himself up inside another nearby restaurant.

Abdullahi Ali, the commissioner of Baidoa town confirmed the arrests, saying that authorities were investigation individual connections to the attack which was claimed by Al Shabab group.

“All of them confessed their involvement in the attacks,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, local officials and hospital sources said that the death toll from the attacks had risen to 30 as hospitals reported that some of the attack victims have succumbed to their ‘serious’ wounds.

More than 45 people were also injured in the blasts.

The attacks come despite efforts by local officials to curb violence in the town which has seen attacks before, with more than 11 people were killed in a suicide attack on the local administration’s headquarters in March last year.

The town which is the regional capital for Southwestern State, a regional administration led by the former parliament speaker of Somalia Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden is controlled by Ethiopian troops who are parts of the AU forces and Somali forces.

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