An explosion hit a military base in the Somali capital on Wednesday and was followed by gunfire, a witness said, as the al Qaeda-linked militant al Shabaab group claimed responsibility for what it described as a suicide bomb attack.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties from the blast at the Jale Siyad military base in Mogadishu.<\/p>\n
“We heard a sudden blast, then gunfire inside the base as we drove past it, we could only see a huge cloud of smoke,” Ahmed Nur, a bus driver, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
In 2023, in a similar incident, a suicide bomber killed 25 soldiers at the same base. In May, a\u00a0suicide bomber killed\u00a0at least 10 people after targeting a queue of young recruits registering at the Damanyo military base, opposite Jale Siyad.<\/p>\n
Al Shabaab has waged an insurgency in Somalia since 2007 and made significant advances in the countryside this year.<\/p>\n
“A suicide bomber entered the base targeting the Western experts who train soldiers,” the militant group said in a statement, adding there were casualties, without providing any details.<\/p>\n
Reuters was not able to verify the group’s claims. Defence Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi did not immediately respond to calls for comment.<\/p>\n
A new African Union\u00a0peacekeeping mission\u00a0in Somalia replaced a larger force at the start of this year, but its funding is uncertain, with the United States opposed to a plan to transition to a U.N. financing model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An explosion hit a military base in the Somali capital on Wednesday and was followed by gunfire, a witness said, as the al Qaeda-linked militant al Shabaab group claimed responsibility for what it described as a suicide bomb attack. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties from the blast at the Jale Siyad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"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":[2186,189],"class_list":["post-16890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-al-shabaab","tag-somalia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16890","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=16890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}