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| Africa Horn |
| Somali presidential compound attacked, president safe |
| 2014-07-09 |
| [Pak Daily Times] Somalia's Islamist Shabaab rebels carried out a major bomb and armed assault against the country's presidential palace late Tuesday, penetrating the heavily-fortified complex before blowing themselves up. Officials said Somalia's internationally-backed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed were not inside the complex at the time and were "both safe". Security sources said they were with guards from the 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... 's 22,000-strong AMISOM force. "There were at least nine attackers, all have been killed, and the situation is under control, the attack is over," security official Abdi Ahmed said. "There were eight blasts towards the end of the fighting, believed to have been boom jackets. They detonated themselves." A Shabaab front man confirmed that the Al-Qaeda-linked group was behind the attack, and claimed their commandos had managed to seize the president's office inside the presidential compound known as the Villa Somalia. "Our commandos are inside the so-called presidential office," Shabaab front man Abdulaziz Abu Musab told AFP. "We are in control of the headquarters of the apostate regime." |
| Posted by:Fred |