BEVERLY HILLS, December 20, (THEWILL) – A young woman strapped with explosives blew herself up Wednesday during an address by Somalia’s prime minister in Mogadishu, killing four people, including the country’s Olympic and football bosses.
She detonated her suicide belt as Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali was on a podium addressing 200 people gathered to mark the first anniversary of the Somalia’s satellite TV network, an AFP reporter who witnessed the incident said.
Somali Olympic Committee president Aden Yabarow Wiish and Somali Football Federation chief Said Mohamed Nur were killed in the blast.
The prime minister, and seven other ministers standing beside him when the young woman set off her explosives, were unharmed.
“There are four dead, including the president of the Olympic committee and the president of the football federation,” Abdirahman Omar Osman, the Somali prime minister’s spokesman, told AFP.
Osman could not give the identity of the two other victims.
Seconds after the blast, chaos filled the venue as the dead and the wounded could be seen slumped on their chairs and lying on the floor while police escorted some of the injured to awaiting ambulances.
The Islamist Shebab rebels who have carried out similar attacks in the past stopped short of claiming direct responsibility.
“The action was carried out by people who support the Shebab,” Sheikh Ali Mohamed Rage, the group’s spokesman, told a pro-Shebab radio.
Somalia’s Information Minister Abdulkadir Hussein Mohamed however laid the blame squarely on the Al Qaeda-linked group.
“The cowardly attack was carried out by Shebab non-believers,” Mohamed told Radio Mogadishu. “The attack is contrary to the teaching of Islam.”
Somalia’s Chinese-built national theatre was re-opened last month by President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and the prime minister for the first time in 20 years.
