Saturday January 2, 2021
At least five Turkish laborers were injured after a suicide bomber carried out an attack on a road construction site in Somalia, security sources said Saturday.
One of the workers is in critical condition, the sources said.
Dismissing reports that the attack targeted Turkish troops in the country, sources said the perpetrator carried it out against Turkish workers by blowing himself up as he rode his motorcycle.
The attack took place some 15 kilometers (9 miles) away from the Turkish military base, Camp TURKSOM, in Mogadishu and no military personnel has been affected by the attack, the sources added.
Turkey's base in Somalia is its biggest overseas military training base and was inaugurated in 2017.
Turkey's vast aid effort at the height of the 2011 famine endeared it to many Somali people, and it has continued to pour in aid, much of it from private companies.
It has built schools, hospitals and infrastructure and provided scholarships for Somalis to study in Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has visited Mogadishu several times and when he made his first trip there in 2011 he became the first non-African leader to visit the war-ravaged nation in 20 years.
Turkey also provided the African nation with over $400 million (TL 3 trillion) in the biggest aid campaign for the country while it was struggling to fight starvation.