Somalia’s Shebab rebels launched a major attack on the national parliament on Saturday, setting off a car bomb and penetrating the building with suicide commandos, police and witnesses said.
A huge car bomb went off outside the gates of the parliament in central Mogadishu shortly before midday, and a string of smaller blasts followed by intense gunfire were also heard coming from inside the complex.
Police said at least four attackers were killed, and AFP reporters at the scene also counted four dead security guards, adding that a number people had also been wounded. Exchanges of gunfire could still be heard coming from inside the building more than an hour after the attack started.“There is an attack near the parliament building. There was a car bomb explosion and gunfire broke out,” police official Husein Ise told AFP.
Witnesses said Shebab militants, the Al-Qaeda-linked group fighting to overthrow Somalia’s internationally-backed government, stormed into the complex while MPs were meeting inside, and a spokesman for the militants confirmed they were behind the attack. “The so-called Somali parliament is a military zone. Our fighters are there to carry out a holy operation,” Shebab’s military spokesman, Abdulaziz Abu Musab, told AFP by telephone. “We shall issue a comprehensive report after the conclusion of the operation,” he added.
Recent Shebab attacks have targeted key areas of government, or the security forces, in an apparent bid to discredit claims by the authorities that they are winning the war against the Islamist fighters.