Thursday October 26, 2017
Soldiers patrol around the wreckage of a suicide car bomber that smashed into pickup truck carrying security officers in Mogadishu Photo - AFP
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Three people died in Somalia on Wednesday in different attacks, one of which targeted a patrol of peacekeepers near the country's capital, Mogadishu, officials told Reuters.
A roadside bomb killed one African Union peacekeeper and wounded another as they patrolled Arbis, a village about 23 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu, according to Wilson Rono, a spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM.
A counter-attack by AMISOM killed four al Shabaab fighters, Rono said. Al Shabaab is the Islamist militant group fighting to topple Somalia's western-backed government and replace it with one strictly adhering to Islamic sharia law.
The group also frequently targets AMISOM, which is supporting the central government.
Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military spokesman, told Reuters the group had killed four AMISOM soldiers and injured two others in the assault
"We have not lost anyone," Abu Musab said, adding that AMISOM had killed civilian as it responded to the attack.
In a second incident late on Wednesday evening, a bomb exploded as it was being prepared in a house in Mogadishu's Karan district, according to Mohamed Osman, a police officer.
"It killed one man and injured another," Osman said.
A female police officer was also killed in Mogadishu's
Hodan district by gunmen who quickly disappeared, a police official said. Abu Musab told Reuters al Shabaab was also responsible for that attack.
(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Larry King)