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At least five dead in Somalia car bomb attack
MOGADISHU, July 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – At least five people were killed and
several wounded when a car bomb was detonated Monday outside a hotel in the
Somali capital Mogadishu, a security officer and witnesses said.
The explosion near a checkpoint outside the Afrik Hotel reverberated
throughout the city, and sent a massive plume of black smoke into the air.
Abdullahi Ahmed, a security officer who witnessed the blast, said at least
five people were killed in the attack, which appeared to be targeting the
hotel.
“I can confirm the death of five people: three civilians and two
government security officers at the checkpoint,” he told AFP.
“The area was relatively dense with bystanders and some were killed and
wounded in the blast, but we don’t have the exact number of casualties.”
Other witnesses describing being knocked to the ground by the force of the
blast, which damaged nearby buildings.
“I was not very far away from where the blast occurred, and I could see
several people lying (on the ground), some of them dead with a pool of
blood,” said one, Abdikarim Mohamed.
“The blast was huge. It did damage to several nearby buildings.”
Suado Ali was walking out of a travel agency when the shockwave knocked
her flat.
“I was forced to the ground by the shockwave. I saw nearly ten people
lying on the ground, some motionless and others screaming for help”, he told
AFP.
The attack comes just over a week after 26 people were killed and 56
injured in a 12-hour attack by Al-Shabaab jihadists on a popular hotel in the
southern Somali port city of Kismayo.
A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle loaded with explosives into the Medina
hotel on Friday before several heavily armed gunmen forced their way inside,
shooting as they went.
That attack was the latest in a long line of bombing and assaults claimed
by Shabaab, which has fought for more than a decade to topple the Somali
government.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1626 hrs