A blast near a presidential palace checkpoint in Mogadishu, in the capital of Somalia, had left 6 dead and at least 12 injured.
Preliminary observations indicated that the presidential palace was targeted. The blast occurred at a restaurant surrounding a clinic and close a security checkpoint leading to the president’s resident in Mogadishu.
Numerous of the people living in the heavily populated area witnessed the blast. An eye witness recounts, “A loud explosion rocked here unexpectedly.
The suicide bomber was pushing a wheelbarrow, several people were killed here […] It was a big tragedy. The big explosion caused civilian casualties, that was a tragic one”
“The incident is still (being) investigated to know the exact details but preliminary observation we have indicates that someone carried out the blast”, said security official Abdullahi Muktar.
Mogadishu has witnessed series of attacks and also in the early January, which has seen Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu, the governments spokesman wounded in the attack.
The country has immersed in political crisis attributable to long-running dispute over delayed elections. Somalia’s election act in accordance with a complex indirect model, by which the state legislatures and clan representatives select lawmakers for the national parliament, who in turn choose the president.
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Election for the Upper house ended last year, while clan representatives have so far elected about 40% of the 275 MP’s who sit in the lower house. The president of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and the prime minister, Mohammed Hussein Roble, have been at odds over the process.
The electoral deadlock had worried Somalia’s backers, who fear it distract to the battle against Al-shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group which has been brawling the central government over a decade.
