Sunday, May 04, 2014
newsinsdieMOGADISHU – Somali authorities on Saturday aborted an attempt on the life of a lawmaker in the capital Mogadishu.
“Security agencies got a tip-off about planting explosives in lawmaker Abdullah Ahmed Hussein’s vehicle in a hotel parking lot,” municipal official Abdul-Qadir Mohamed Abdul-Qadir told Anadolu Agency.
He said policemen cordoned off the area where the car was parked and detonated the vehicle remotely.
No casualties were reported.
A Somali lawmaker had been killed in a car bomb explosion in the same area last month.
There has not been any claim of responsibility for the operation, but fingers of accusation are pointed at the militant Al-Shabaab movement, which claimed responsibility for the assassination of two lawmakers last month.
Al-Shabaab was pushed out of Mogadishu in 2011 – and later from other urban strongholds – by a joint force of African Union troops and Somali army.
But the group continues to carry out attacks in the troubled Horn of Africa country, which has remained in the grip of on-again, off-again violence since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.
Copyright © 2014 Anadolu Agency
