Three people died this Sunday and nine were injured, including several ministers and regional deputies, after a jihadist suicide car bomb attack on a hotel in the city of Jowhar, about 90 kilometers from the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
The information was confirmed to the EFE agency by medical sources.
“I saw the bodies of three people dead and nine woundedmainly employees,” Abdifatah Hassan, from Jowhar Hospital, told Efe, specifying that the dead were two hotel security guards and an assistant.
The attack, attributed to the jihadist group Al-Shabab, rocked the Nuur Doob hotel, frequented by government officials in the state of Hirshabelle (central south), whose capital is Jowhar.
The Minister of State for Women, Asha Khalif, the Minister of State for Health, Abdi Moalim, the former Speaker of the Hirshabelle Parliament and several deputies from that state.are among the victims of the explosion” and “everyone is injured”, said the same sources, quoted by the Spanish news agency Efe, without giving further details.
The explosion caused extensive material damage to the establishment and surrounding buildings, according to images shown by Somali National Television (SNTV).
Somalia’s new Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre called Hirshabelle President Ali Gudlawe to express his sadness at the “cowardly terrorist attackSomali state press reported.
Barre became prime minister on June 25, after the Somali parliament approved his appointment, proposed by the country’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, winner of the May 15 elections and whom he promised in his investiture speech to end with Al-Shabab.
The jihadist group, which joined the al-Qaeda terrorist network in 2012, carries out frequent attacks in Mogadishu and other parts of that country to overthrow the central government and forcibly establish a “Wahhabi” (ultra-conservative) style Islamic state. ).
In addition, Al-Shabab controls various parts of the country, especially the rural areas in the center and south.
Somalia has been in a state of war and chaos since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown, leaving the country without an effective government and in the hands of Islamic militias and warlords.
Source: Observadora
