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| Africa Horn |
| 9 Dead, Scores Hurt in Twin Bomb Attack in Somali Town |
| 2014-12-06 |
| [AnNahar] At least nine people were killed Friday in a twin kaboom in the central Somali town of Baidoa, police said, the latest in a string of attacks. Two of those killed were journalists and three others were among the scores maimed, colleagues said. "A jacket wallah let 'er rip amongst a crowd of people drinking at a busy teashop in the town. We have so far counted at least nine civilians, among them journalists, who died in the attack," police officer Abdirasak Ali told Agence La Belle France-Presse. Minutes later a second blast went kaboom!as rescuers went to help those who had been maimed. "A second kaboom, a car loaded with explosives parked nearby, went off as rescuers rushed to the scene, and that caused most of the casualties," Ali added. The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) said in a statement that it was "saddened at the murder of two journalists and three others maimed in ... the latest and biggest journalists? fatality in a single day in 2014." The attack comes a day after a new federal regional leader took power in Baidoa, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of the capital Mogadishu. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Somalia's al-Qaeda-affiliated Shabaab rebels have previously carried out repeated attacks in the town as part of their fight to overthrow the country's internationally-backed government. Witnesses described a scene of carnage, with bodies of maimed victims scattered around the blast site. "I saw the dead body of seven civilians including a journalist, two other journalists were also maimed," said local resident Abdirahman Hussein. "Many people were maimed so I fear that the number who are killed could increase." Recent Shabaab attacks in Somalia have targeted key government and security sites in an apparent bid to discredit claims by the authorities and African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... troops that they are winning the war. On Thursday they maimed an MP and killed a former politician in Mogadishu, while on Wednesday a Shabaab suicide bomber killed four when they rammed an exploding car into a United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... convoy. The Shabaab have also stepped up operations in neighboring Kenya, and on Tuesday massacred 36 non-Moslem quarry workers in a Kenyan border town. |
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