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Islamist Militants Attack Peacekeeper Base in Somalia
| Wall Street Journal | - |
NAIROBI,
Kenya—The Islamist militant group al-Shabaab said it carried out the
suicide bombings on a peacekeeping base in the Somali capital on Tuesday
that killed at least 12 people.
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At least 10 people were killed in
Somalia when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the United
Nations Mine Action Service offices on Tuesday. Photo: AP.
It was the latest in a series of attacks this year by al-Shabaab, which opposes the central government in Mogadishu and the presence in Somalia of United Nations and African Union peacekeepers that are supporting it in its fight against the insurgents.
In Tuesday’s assault, two vehicles exploded at a checkpoint near an entrance to the massive, fortified base at Halane, which houses the peacekeepers, their staff and Mogadishu’s airport.
The first vehicle exploded as it tried to storm the checkpoint and the other just inside it, but the main area of the base wasn’t breached, said Lt. Col. Joe Kibet, a spokesman for the African Union mission in Somalia. “It was a massive explosion,” he said.
Lt. Col. Kibet said it was likely many of the casualties were civilians.
“The problem was the explosion happened out of the camp, on the road. It’s a road that’s usually very busy with people,” he said. No African Union troops were killed, he added.
The U.N. condemned the attack and said none of the dead were U.N. personnel.
More than 22,000 troops and police serve in the African Union force, which also includes troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.
The force, backed by Somali government troops and U.N. peacekeepers, pushed al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu in 2011 and have regained control of large parts of the Somali countryside. But the militants have continued to strike inside government-controlled cities and other areas.
In February, a Somali man on board a commercial flight from Mogadishu to Djibouti detonated an explosive, blowing a hole in the fuselage of the plane and killing himself but causing no other casualties. Earlier this month, al-Shabaab fighters struck a Somali military training camp with a car bomb and gunfire, killing eight soldiers.
Write to Heidi Vogt at heidi.vogt@wsj.com