A powerful boom-mobile went
kaboom!in Jalalaqsi town when soldiers operating a security checkpoint intercepted a vehicle. The checkpoint is near local government buildings and a military base belonging to 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...
peacekeepers from Djibouti.
"At around 2:30 p.m., a vehicle arrived at the checkpoint, one of the soldiers collecting taxation pointed a gun and stopped it," said Mire Hussein Siyad, deputy district commissioner of Jalalaqsi.
"When the gun was pointed at [it], the vehicle went
kaboom!," Siyad told VOA Somali.
He said Wednesday’s explosion killed at least 15 people, including the town’s two civilian leaders, Mayor Adan Mohammed Isse and Mohammed Nur Agajof Dabaashe, the district commissioner. Dabaashe was recently replaced as Jalalaqsi commissioner, but he had not handed over responsibility yet, Siyad said.
Other victims included soldiers at the checkpoints and civilians including street vendors. The explosion destroyed a building near the checkpoint where the local officials were based. Siyad said two AU peacekeepers were maimed in the attack.
Siyad said the target was the town’s main bridge.
Meanwhile,
...back at the palazzo, Don Smilzo looked for an avenue of escape. The only window opened a hundred feet above the moat. The nearest of the hired assassins hold a bloody axe.
The window was looking better all the time....
six other people including four non-combatants were killed a separate explosion, when a three-wheeled cycle of violence with explosives attached, struck the Bulobarde town bridge. The important bridge links Somalia’s south and central regions. Pictures taken by the witnesses show the earth-shattering kaboom partially damaged the bridge.
The district commissioner of Bulobarde, Ahmed Mahad Nur, told VOA Somali that two men riding the cycle of violence drove it onto the bridge. He said one of the men jumped off before the earth-shattering kaboom while the second one detonated the explosive-laden cycle of violence and died in the blast.
Nur said the man who jumped was shot and killed by security forces. He said troops seized two other cycle of violences laden with explosives.
The officials said the two explosions were coordinated and intended to destroy the two bridges.
"They wanted to bring down the two bridges at the same time," Siyad said.
"It’s the most crucial bridge between the central and southern regions," said Nur.
Nur vowed the local government will rebuild the damaged bridge.
The al-Shabaab
...... the personification of Somali state failure...bad boy group immediately grabbed credit for the two attacks.
Bulobarde and Jalalaqsi in the Hiran region (Hirshabelle state) have been the focal point of efforts to mobilize the local population against al-Shabaab.
Somali army spokesperson General Abdullahi Ali Anod on Tuesday reported that government forces and local fighters are completing preparations for new operations against al-Shabaab in Hirshabelle, and in Southwest, Galmudug
...a semiautonomous region in central Somalia, bordering Puntland on the north. Galmudug is not trying to obtain international recognition as a separate nation, but rather considers itself autonomous within the larger Somali federalism, for what that's worth...
and Jubaland states. He said the operations could start within a "week or weeks."
Al-Shabaab has threatened clans mobilizing against them with violence.