Al-Shabaab militants attack key Somali towns day after President Mohamud called them ‘bedbugs’, kill 15

Not less than 15 people have been confirmed killed and over 50 injured in three separate bombings, in a strategic Somali town at Central Hirshabelle state, carried out by the al-Shabaab militants a day after President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud called them “bedbugs.”

The Somali authorities said the simultaneous attacks on Saturday occured in Bulobarde town, kilometres north of Mogadishu, where suicide car bomb killed 11 people.

“A suicide bomber driving an SUV vehicle laden with explosives came under fire from security forces before reaching his goal, but detonated explosives near a police station and the base of the African Union peacekeepers from Djibouti,” the statement said, quoting security agencies.

“At least 11 people were killed in the blast and more than 50 injured, 30 of them in critical condition,” Yusuf Isaq Mumin, a medical official in the town, told journalists.

“We are now sending those critically injured to Mogadishu since the local hospital has not the capacity to handle their cases here,” he added.

According to the report, another powerful car bomb exploded near a Somali military checkpoint in Jalalaqsi town, some 160 kilometers north of Mogadishu, when soldiers operating the checkpoint intercepted an explosives-laden vehicle.

“A vehicle driven by a suicide bomber detonated near the checkpoint. Another suicide bomber detonated a vehicle at a location close to a school. At least four people were killed in the attack,” a former deputy district commissioner of Jalalaqsi, Mire Hussein Siyad, said.

Both towns of Jalalaqsi and Bulobarde are important trading and farming towns located along the banks of the Shabelle River, and they also are the second- and third-biggest towns in Hiran province and have been under al-Shabaab “isolation” for more than 10 years.

They have recently been the focal point of efforts to mobilize the local population against al-Shabaab amid an ongoing Somali military campaign to defeat militants following Mohamud’s declaration of a “total war” against the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group after being elected in May last year.

Al-Shabab has threatened violence against clans mobilising against them in the past.

In October of last year, similar terrorist attacks that targeted bridges in those towns killed at least 21 people.