A spokesman for the Somali Ministry of Defense said today, Friday, that the army had killed more than 100 al-Shabaab fighters in the Gars Magen and Ail Hariri districts in the central province of Hiran.
Spokesman Abdullah Anoud added that the operation was carried out in cooperation with the “popular resistance”.
Yesterday, Somali television quoted military officials as saying that the army had killed dozens of al-Shabaab fighters in the Hiran area with the support of a US airstrike.
It came one day after two people were killed and five injured in a roadside bomb that hit a car full of students in the Denile district of Mogadishu.
Among the injured were people traveling with students and other bystanders, police spokesman Sadiq Dudesh said, adding that the dead students were returning home from school on Thursday.
This and several other incidents show that Al-Shabaab is targeting people indiscriminately.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the explosion. Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab often carries out attacks in the Somali capital.
An extremist group has claimed responsibility for two car bomb attacks last Saturday that killed more than 100 people at a busy intersection in the capital. Al-Shabaab said the Ministry of Education was the target of the attack.
The bombing comes as government forces, in cooperation with tribal militias, continue fighting against Al-Shabaab, in which they have killed dozens of members of the movement and regained control of many areas.
For years, Somalia has been waging war against al-Shabaab, which was founded in early 2004 and is an armed movement ideologically linked to al-Qaeda, which has carried out numerous terrorist operations that have claimed hundreds of lives.
