Somalia: Suicide Bombers Attack Restaurant In Mogadishu, Killing 15

[High_Gravity]

Somalia: Suicide Bombers Attack Restaurant In Mogadishu, Killing 15

MOGADISHU, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers walked into a restaurant in central Mogadishu and killed at least 15 people on Thursday, police said, highlighting the security challenges facing the country's new president.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. However, suspicions will fall on the Islamist militant group al Shabaab which has carried out a campaign of suicide bombings since it withdrew from the capital last year under military pressure.

The al Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for suicide bombings last week outside a hotel where President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was holding a news conference just two days into the job, an attack interpreted as a warning from the insurgents that they are far from defeated.

Police spokesman General Abdullahi Barise told Reuters 15 people were killed in Thursday's attack. A Reuters photographer saw several bodies, the severed heads of the two bombers and pools of blood on the floor.

The blasts targeted The Village restaurant, owned by well-known Somali businessman Ahmed Jama, who had returned to his home country from London to set up business against the advice of friends.

"My relatives, whom I created jobs for, have perished. My customers have perished. All innocent people. I cannot count them, their dead bodies are before me," a distraught Jama told Reuters.

Three local journalists were among the dead, including a reporter at the state-run Somali National Television, the National Union of Somali Journalists said.

The al Shabaab-linked website SomaliMeMo said in a statement that those killed "supported the infidel government" but stopped short of saying the group was behind the attack.

Somalia: Suicide Bombers Attack Restaurant In Mogadishu, Killing 15

 

[waltky]

Al Shabaab's 'Last Major Bastion' Falls...

Kenya says Somali rebel city falls; fighting near beach
Friday, 28 September 2012 - Kenyan and Somali government troops captured Somalia’s southern port of Kismayu, the al-Shabaab militant group’s last major bastion, the Kenyan military said on Friday, but residents said there was fighting just outside the city.

“(A report that) Kismayu fell today to KDF (Kenyan Defense Forces) and TFG (Somali government troops) forces is indeed very true,” military spokesman Cyrus Oguna told Kenya’s Citizen television. Along with forces from Uganda, Burundi and Djibouti, Kenyan troops have been battling the group, which has links to Al-Qaeda, in an African Union peacekeeping force mandated with wiping out the rebels from their strongholds. “So far there has been minimal resistance,” Oguna told Reuters, adding that the troops had entered Kismayu early on Friday.

In Kismayu, residents said they could hear fighting near the beach, which is about 4 km outside the city. “Now we hear shelling from the ships and the (rebels) are responding with anti-aircraft guns,” Ismail Suglow told Reuters on Friday. “We saw seven ships early in the morning and now their firing looks like lightening and thunder. Al-Shabaab have gone towards the beach. Many residents have taken their guns. The ships poured many AU troops on the beach,” he added.

Al-Shabaab, which was driven out of the capital Mogadishu last August and is fighting African Union forces in other parts of the country, said there was heavy fighting going on between the two sides. “Ships have brought Kenyan troops on our Kismayu beach last night. Fierce fighting between us and them is going on now,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al-Shabaab’s spokesman for military operations, told Reuters on Friday.

Kenya sent its troops into Somalia last October after the rebels were blamed for a series of raids on Kenyan soil targeting its security forces as well as Western tourists. Somalia has made progress in the past year in battling the Islamist militants, who have wanted to impose their strict interpretation of Sharia law across the country since taking control of large swathes of south-central Somalia from 2007.

Kenya says Somali rebel city falls; fighting near beach

See also:

Kenya navy shells Somali town after rebels retreat
Sun Sep 30, 2012 - Kenyan warships shelled the southern Somali port of Kismayu overnight after al Qaeda-linked rebels said they had abandoned the city, residents said on Sunday.

Stunned by an assault by sea, air and ground forces late on Friday night, al Shabaab rebels fled the city that had been their key source of revenue, retreating to surrounding forests and towns. However, there were conflicting reports on Sunday evening about how much of Kismayu African Union forces (AMISOM) now controlled. The Kenya Defence Force (KDF), part of AMISOM, said it had seized the sea port, the police headquarters and the radio station, but a source in the Somalia National Army told Reuters AMISOM was close to taking control of those installations but had not yet done so.

The shells being fired by Kenyan warships may have been targeting remaining pockets of resistance or military installations in the city that was the rebels' last stronghold. "The ships were firing deafening shells at the outskirts last night but several shells landed on houses," said Samira Ismail, a local mother of four. Al Shabaab said two children had been killed and other people wounded in the shelling, a statement rejected as propaganda by Col. Cyrus Oguna, a Kenyan military spokesman.

Kenyan and Somali troops sent to retake Kismayu from the rebels were on the town's outskirts, Oguna said earlier on Sunday, and were proceeding carefully in case al Shabaab's claim to have abandoned the city was a ploy to lure them into a trap. "The troops are consolidating and making plans to expand into the southern part of the city," Oguna told Reuters. "A lot of caution must be exercised here. We don't want to get into a situation where we start to lose troops here and there."

The southern part is the city center and whoever wins it will effectively have control over the port and other strategic installations. The KDF and the Somalia National Army, fighting under the flag of the African Union force in Somalia (AMISOM), have not suffered any casualties in the operation, Oguna said. An al Shabaab official said that although the group had ceded control of Kismayu, its fighters were poised to engage the allied troops once they entered the city.

More http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/30/us-somalia-conflict-idUSBRE88T0K920120930

 

[Mr. H.]

Bunch of crazy motherscratchers. (Yes, that's one word)

 

[LAfrique]

(Waltky, where is High_Gravity? He's not been on board for some time now. Hope he's okay.)

 

[High_Gravity]

(Waltky, where is High_Gravity? He's not been on board for some time now. Hope he's okay.)

I'm here, I'm doing ok I guess.

 

[LAfrique]

(Waltky, where is High_Gravity? He's not been on board for some time now. Hope he's okay.)

I'm here, I'm doing ok I guess.

Nice to know. Good day!

 

[High_Gravity]

(Waltky, where is High_Gravity? He's not been on board for some time now. Hope he's okay.)

I'm here, I'm doing ok I guess.

Nice to know. Good day!

Thanks man.