Somalia's al Shabaab claim twin attacks that killed 18

Saturday, September 07, 2013

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Somalia's Shabaab Islamists claimed twin blasts in the Hamarweyne district of the capital Mogadishu that left at least 18 people dead.

"Successful operations carried out in Mogadishu's Hamarweyne district," the group said on its Somali-language Twitter feed.

Mohamed Yusuf, spokesman for the Mogadishu authorities, said that after the car bomb went off, a suicide bomber immediately blew himself up in the restaurant.

"First a car bomb exploded at the entrance of the restaurant, and when people converged inside a suicide bomber blew up himself," he said.

A Reuters witness at the scene described a tangle of mangled tables, chairs, blood and pieces of human flesh. Security forces cordoned off the area and told people to stay away for fear of more blasts.

Two suicide bombers hit the same restaurant in September last year.

In the biggest attack so far this year, al Shabaab in June assaulted the main U.N. compound in the Somali capital, killing at least 22 people.

Somalia has a new elected government that has been in charge for about a year and is striving to rebuild itself after two decades of civil war and lawlessness triggered by the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991.

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