A military captain who gave his name as Suleiman described the attack as he had seen it unfold.<\/p>\n
“I was on the other side of the road. A speeding tuk-tuk stopped, a man alighted, ran into the queue, and then blew himself up. I saw 10 people dead, including recruits and passers-by. The death toll may rise,” he said.<\/p>\n
Dozens of abandoned shoes and the remains of the suicide bomber were visible at the scene.<\/p>\n
Another witness, Abdisalan Mohamed, said he had seen “hundreds of teenagers at the gate as we passed by in a bus”.<\/p>\n
“Abruptly, a deafening blast occurred, and the area was covered by dense smoke. We could not see the details of casualties,” he said.<\/p>\n
Medical staff at the military hospital told Reuters they had received 30 injured people from the blast and that six of them had died immediately.<\/p>\n
Government forces quickly cordoned off the entire area.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, and government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
The attack echoed a similar incident in 2023 when a suicide bomber killed 25 soldiers at the Jale Siyad base, located opposite the Damanyo facility.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s attack followed the assassination on Saturday of Colonel Abdirahmaan Hujaale, commander of battalion 26, in the Hiiran region, amid local reports of al-Shabaab militant infiltration into government and security forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A military captain who gave his name as Suleiman described the attack as he had seen it unfold. “I was on the other side of the road. A speeding tuk-tuk stopped, a man alighted, ran into the queue, and then blew himself up. I saw 10 people dead, including recruits and passers-by. The death toll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129],"tags":[4023,2049],"class_list":["post-16254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-hiiran","tag-mogadishu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}