By Ebi Kesiena
Five people were killed and over a dozen injured in a car bombing near a school in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Thursday.
In the latest attack to hit the troubled country, security official Mohamed Abdillahi confirmed to AFP that there was a car bomb blast which claimed the life five people and 15 others were wounded, adding that 11 students were among the injured victims.
“We don’t know the target of the attack, but there was a private security escort vehicle passing by the area,” he added.
The Director of Mogadishu’s Aamin ambulance service, Abdikadir Abdirahman, shared photos of the rubble-strewn scene on Twitter, calling the bombing a tragedy.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast, but the jihadist Al-Shabaab group has claimed other bombings in Mogadishu, including a deadly attack on Saturday that killed a prominent Somali journalist.
Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled, the Director of Government-owned Radio Mogadishu, was a fierce critic of the Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Al-Shabaab, which has been waging a violent insurgency against the country’s fragile government since 2007, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in a statement, saying its fighters had long pursued the journalist.
Al-Shabaab controlled the capital until 2011 when it was pushed out by African Union troops, but it still holds territory in the countryside and launches frequent attacks against government and civilian targets in Mogadishu and elsewhere.
