At least six civilians were killed in an attack by the Somali al-Shabaab movement outside the city hall in the center of the capital city of Mogadishu today, Sunday, followed by a shootout, according to Mogadishu Municipality Police, according to the Mogadishu Municipality Police.
“Six attackers were killed, five during a firefight with security forces, one of them blew himself up,” Dudishe told reporters.
“The attack also killed six civilians, and the situation returned to normal,” he added.
The police said that all the workers in the city hall were rescued.
Eyewitnesses previously reported that nearby buildings were damaged as a result of the explosion, and gunfire is still heard near the city hall building.
“There is shooting near the main building, but we don’t know what is happening inside,” said a witness who owns a store near the headquarters.
“There were victims, but the entire area was cordoned off, and the security forces asked us to move away from the scene,” he added.
Omar Noor, another witness, said he was at the mall when the explosion happened and “he was lucky that he managed to get away unharmed”.
The al-Qaeda-linked extremist movement al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack on its social media pages, saying its fighters “infiltrated the target building after killing the guards.”
Since 2007, the extremist movement Al-Shabaab has been fighting the federal government with the support of the international community and carrying out attacks in Somalia and neighboring countries.
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The attack comes after the killing of seven soldiers last Friday at an army camp in the city of Galgad in central Somalia, about 375 kilometers north of the capital Mogadishu.
The US military said on Saturday that more than 100 al-Shabaab fighters were involved in the attack, which took place in a Somali city that the army recaptured this week.
And the US military command in Africa (AFRICOM) said in a statement that “joint operations conducted by partner forces on the ground and a collective strike in self-defense resulted in the destruction of three vehicles and the death of approximately thirty terrorists.” from Al-Shabaab.
In recent months, the army and tribal fighters have reclaimed swaths of territory in the center of the country in an operation backed by US airstrikes and African Union forces.
However, al-Shabaab fighters are still carrying out bloody attacks in response, which shows that they are still capable of strikes in the center of cities and strike at Somali military installations.
Al-Shabaab carried out a bloody attack on a military base in another part of central Somalia on Tuesday, a day after the government announced a “historic victory” against the jihadists.
Police said last week that eight people were killed in a roadside bomb attack in central Somalia claimed by al-Shabaab. Earlier this month, 19 people were killed in two car bombings in the city of Mahas in the Hiran district of Hirshabel province.
Although ousted from Mogadishu and other major cities over a decade ago, Al-Shabaab continues to operate in some rural areas of central and southern Somalia.
In the deadliest attack by a jihadist group since last year, 121 people were killed in a two car bomb attack targeting the Ministry of Education in Mogadishu last October.
The group has also recently been active overseas in eastern Kenya, participating with African Union forces in Somalia, where it has carried out several deadly small attacks.
