October 13, 2018

SOMALIA: Two al-Shabaab Islamic Militant Group Suicide Bombers Detonated Explosives Strapped Around His Waist Inside A Secular Restaurant And Inside A Secular Hotel. 16 MURDERED, 30 Injured.

Gulf News
written by AFP staff
Saturday October 13, 2018

Mogadishu: At least 16 people were killed in Somalia on Saturday in suicide bombings that targeted a restaurant and coffee shop, police said.

Suicide bombers walked into the two locations in the southwestern city of Baidoa and detonated their vests within minutes of each other, according to witnesses.

The blasts came a day before the first anniversary of a truck bombing that left more than 500 dead in Mogadishu, the worst-ever attack in Somalia, which was blamed on Islamist group Al Shabaab.

"The number of the dead we have confirmed from the two blasts is 16 and nearly 20 others were wounded some of them seriously, nine people died in the second blast and seven in the first," said Abudulahi Mohamed, a police official in Baidoa.

"The targeted locations are populated by innocent civilians so that all of the victims were civilians, and the number of the dead can increase anytime because of the wounded," he added.

Mohamed Adam, another police official, gave the same toll.

"I saw 15 dead bodies at the hospital all of them collected from the scene of the attacks, many worried people poured into the hospital looking for their relatives" Abdi Hassan, a relative of a patient who was wounded in the blast.

Shabaab, an Al Qaida affiliate, is fighting to overthrow the internationally backed Somali government in Mogadishu.

The Shabaab were forced out of the capital by African Union troops in 2011 but still control parts of the countryside and carry out attacks against government, military and civilian targets seemingly at will in Mogadishu and regional towns.


Minneapolis Star Tribune
written by Abdi Guled, Associated Press
Saturday October 13, 2018

NAIROBI, Kenya — A suicide bomber detonated in a restaurant in the Somali town of Baidoa and another blast struck a hotel nearby, leaving at least 16 people dead and more than 30 wounded, authorities said Saturday.

Most of the casualties were caused by the bomber who walked into the restaurant with explosives strapped around his waist, Col. Ahmed Muse told The Associated Press.

Many of the wounded at Baidoa's main hospital had horrific injuries, nurse Mohamed Isaq told the AP.

The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group claimed responsibility for the blasts via its radio arm, Andalus. It said one blast targeted a hotel owned by a former Somali minister, Mohamed Aden Fargeti, one of several candidates running for the presidency of the region in November's election.

Baidoa is a key economic center about 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of the capital, Mogadishu, and about the same distance east of the Ethiopian border. Al-Shabab, which controlled Baidoa between 2009 and 2012 before being driven out by Ethiopian-backed government forces, still holds parts of southern and central Somalia.

The blasts came a day before Somalia marks the first anniversary of the deadliest attack in its history, a truck bombing that killed more than 500 people in Mogadishu.

Attention in recent days has turned to Baidoa, the interim capital of South West state, as high-level al-Shabab defector Mukhtar Robow seeks the regional presidency in November.

On Saturday he visited some of the wounded in Baidoa's main hospital, condemning the attacks and calling on people to team up in fighting the extremist group of which he once was deputy leader.

Robow is the highest-ranking official to have ever quit al-Shabab, surrendering to the Somali government last year after the United States cancelled a $5 million reward offered for his capture.

Somalia's government earlier this month said Robow was not eligible to run for the regional presidency because he is still under U.S. sanctions that were imposed against him in 2008 when he was identified as a "specially designated global terrorist."

Robow, who has yet to respond to the government's statement, has continued his campaign and remains registered on the list of candidates.

He is among several people challenging former Somali parliament speaker and incumbent regional president Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden. Among the candidates is Somalia's former intelligence chief Hussein Osman, who has just resigned.

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News24
written by AP staff
Wednesday October 10, 2018

The Somalia-based al-Shabaab extremist group says it has executed five men accused of spying for US, British and Somali intelligence agencies.

Al-Shabaab announced the killings on its Andalus radio station, saying they were carried out in a public square in Jilib town in Middle Jubba region late on Tuesday.

According to residents, the men were tied to poles and shot by a firing squad shortly after a self-proclaimed judge sentenced them to death.

Al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda's East Africa affiliate, has fought for years to impose a strict version of Islam in the Horn of Africa nation.

Despite losing territory in recent years, the extremist group continues to carry out deadly attacks in many parts of the country, especially the capital, Mogadishu. A truck bombing there in October 2017 killed 512 people.

NTV Kenya published on Oct 13, 2018: Mandera County has been hit hard by terror attacks in the past 7 years with Lafey sub county bearing the most brunt . The insecurity has affected the once busy and preferred Mandera - Lafey highway, a 115 Km stretch connecting the two towns, and that has now been rendered impassable as Al shabaab militants carry out attacks at will along this road. NTV’s Ahmed Maulid tells us more about terror's highway, and how it has affected businesses and daily life in Mandera.

Radio Free Europe
written by RFE Staff, AFP, and Reuters
Saturday October 13, 2018

An Al-Qaeda-linked militant group is using Iran as its main transit point for illegal charcoal exports from Somalia, enabling the group to earn millions of dollars in profits, a report to the UN Security Council seen by media says.

According to a report cited by AFP and Reuters on October 12, since March, the main destination for the illegal shipments has been ports in Iran, where the charcoal is packaged into white bags labelled "Product of Iran."

The United Nations has banned Somali charcoal imports since 2012 to cut sources of revenue for Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate that generates revenues for its Islamist insurgency by levying taxes on charcoal production in the regions it controls.

The UN estimates that, despite UN sanctions banning such exports, Somalia produced some 3.6 million bags of charcoal in 2017 for export, generating some $7.5 million in revenue for Al-Shabaab.

The report called Iran a "weak link" in implementing the UN's charcoal ban, and also cast blame on countries such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast for allowing charcoal traffickers to "exploit weaknesses" in their certification processes.

The illegal shipments that arrive in Iran usually carry certificates that falsely state that the Somali charcoal originated in Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire, or Ghana, the unpublished UN report says.

The document identifies Iranian ports in the Kish and Qeshm free zones as the main destinations of the Somali charcoal shipments since March 2018.

From there, the charcoal is sent on "Iran-flagged dhows" to ports in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Dubai, and elsewhere, where it is mainly used for cooking and smoking shisha water pipes, the report says.

The Iranian mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The report says Iran became a transit point for the illegal Somali shipments after Oman tightened its customs procedures.

The report provided to the UN council was drafted by a UN group of experts tasked with monitoring sanctions on the Somali militants.

Al-Shabaab militants have vowed to overthrow the Somali government (AGAIN), which is backed by the UN and a 20,000-strong force from the African Union stationed in the country.

While Al-Shabaab was pushed out of Mogadishu in 2011 and lost many of other bastions, they still control vast rural areas in the country.

In addition to earnings millions from charcoal sales, Al-Shabaab is making millions annually by imposing tolls on vehicles in areas where they have checkpoints and through taxes on businesses, agriculture, and livestock, the report says.

All this "generates more than enough revenue to sustain its insurgency," it says.

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