Somali army chief survives as 13 killed in car bomb
Print Edition
SOMALIA’S new military chief survived a suicide car bomb attack yesterday that killed 13 people, police say.
General Mohamed Ahmed Jimale had just been sworn into office and was traveling in a convoy with senior military officials when the bomb exploded near Somalia’s defense ministry compound in Mogadishu, police say.
Five soldiers and at least 8 civilians traveling in a passing minibus were killed, said Captain Mohamed Hussein, a senior Somali police officer.
Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, claimed responsibility for the attack.
A huge cloud of smoke billowed over the scene and heavy gunfire was heard in the area. The wreckage of the minibus destroyed by the powerful bomb was in the street, with a pool of blood under the vehicle.
Soldiers fired in the air to disperse a crowd standing near a car of an electricity company that was destroyed by the blast.
“What happened here was a painful tragedy — the blast struck two packed minibuses and no one survived,” said Abdifitah Halane, a spokesman for Mogadishu’s mayor.
“There is flesh and blood everywhere,” he said looking at the destruction caused by the blast.
Behind the minibus wreckage, a bereaved woman wept and called out the name of a man presumed to be her husband in the vehicle.
The bomb gave an explosive start to Jimale’s term as the chief of the Somali National Army. He was appointed on Thursday by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed who declared Somalia a war zone. The president, who was elected in February, replaced his military and intelligence chiefs and instructed the army to prepare a new offensive against al-Shabab extremists.
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