At least 19 people were killed and numerous more were injured in a vehicle bomb assault in a town in central Somalia on Wednesday, according to security authorities and witnesses, news agency AFP reported.
#BREAKING Death toll from central Somalia car bombings rises to 19: security source pic.twitter.com/vUBHNbG2Iy
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) January 4, 2023
Speaking with AFP, local security official Abdullahi Adan stated: “The terrorists attacked Mahas town this morning using vehicles loaded with explosives.”
“They have targeted a civilian area and we have confirmed that nine people, all of them civilians, died in the two explosions,” he further stated.
The incident, attributed to Al-Shabaab jihadist terrorists, occurred in the Hiran district of central Somalia, where a major operation against the Al-Qaeda-linked group was initiated several months ago.
“The terrorists, after having (been) defeated, resorted to desperately targeting civilians, but this will not stop the will of the people to continue defeating them,” Osman Nur, a police commander in Mahas was quoted by AFP in its report.
“They have killed innocent civilians in the explosions,” he added.
According to witnesses, the explosions happened outside a restaurant near a district administration office in Mahas.
“I saw the dead bodies of nine civilians including women and children, this was a horrible attack,” said one witness, Adan Hassan.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia has declared “all-out war” on Al-Shabaab, which has waged a violent insurgency against the internationally supported federal government for 15 years.
Despite being driven out of the country’s major cities roughly ten years ago, Al-Shabaab is entrenched in huge swaths of rural central and southern Somalia and continues to carry out lethal operations in the face of the onslaught.
(With Inputs From AFP)