At least 25 killed in an attack by the jihadist group Al Shabab in Somalia

At least 25 people have died on Monday in Somalia, including a regional minister, and 35 were injured in an attack with two car bombs committed by the jihadist group Al Shabab against a military base in the city of Beledweyne, in the center of the country. “There are 25 dead and 35 wounded after two explosions hit the Lamagalay military base,” in the center of the city, Beledweyne police commander Mohamed Geele told Efe.

The most of the dead are civilians and, among them, are the Minister of Health of the state of Hirshabelle (where the city is), Zakaria Mohamed Ahmed; the deputy governor of the Hiran region (included in Hirshabelle), Abukar Maadey; several local legislators and members of the security forces.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, which caused extensive material damage and was condemned by the governor of Hiran, Ali Jayte Osman. “His brutal acts of his will never weaken the public uprising,” Osman told the Somali national news agency SONNA.

The attack occurred hours after the Government of Somalia be informed that a important leader of Al Shabab, Abdullahi Nadirco-founder of that organization, died last Saturday in an anti-terrorist operation in Somalia.

“Abdullahi Nadir, one of the main leaders of the Al Shabab terrorists, wanted by the Somali government for a long time, was assassinated in an operation carried out by the Somali National Army and international security partners,” the report reported. Ministry of Information Somali.

Nadir He died in the village of Haramka, in the southern region of Middle Jubba, the government said, without clarifying which “international partners” participated in the operation, although the United States usually supports the Somali Army with drones in the fight against terrorism.

Reward

USA had offered a reward of three million dollars for information leading to Nadir, a man close to the current leader of Al Shabab, Abu Ubaidah (also known as Ahmed Diriye), and who has served as head of the finances and media of the group, among other tasks.

The jihadist’s death occurred after the Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamuddeclared a “total war” on August 23 to “eliminate” Al Shabab, whose terrorists took over a well-known hotel in Mogadishu days before for thirty hours and killed 21 people.

Since then, several military operations have been carried out against the fundamentalists, supported by USAwhich last month wiped out “more than a hundred members” of Al Shabab, according to the Somali government.

Al-Shababgroup affiliated since 2012 to the Al Qaeda networkoften perpetrates terrorist attacks in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and other parts of Somalia to overthrow the central government -backed by the international community- and establish by force a Wahhabi (ultra-conservative) Islamic State.

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The jihadist group controls rural areas of central and southern Somalia and also attacks neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.

Somalia It has lived in a state of war and chaos since 1991, when the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown, leaving the country without an effective government and in the hands of Islamist militias and warlords.