A terrible bombing occurred in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on Friday night. Seven people died in the incident, according to AFP. Al-Shabaab, an extremist Islamist group affiliated with al Qaeda, has asserted it was behind this action which began when a suicide bomber blew himself up at Lido Beach.
There was chaos and fear during the night.”Those awful terrorists just randomly shot civilians, I counted like seven dead people along the beach”, recalls Mohamed Omar, police officer. Although many people were wounded by these attacks, there were few civilians rescued by security forces who responded promptly to this tragic event.
All five gunmen involved in the siege were killed and thereby ended by the security forces. In addition officials refer to them as Kharijites; Omar called them that before. He also confirmed that one of their members had blown himself up at the beach.
According to eyewitnesses, it was a horrific scene when explosions occurred in a large crowd. Abdil atif Ali who witnessed it came out stating that “Everybody was panicked, soon after explosion shooting started so it was hard to know what was happening.”
Afterwards Ahmed Yare couldn’t believe his eyes from his vantage point at a nearby hotel.“There were injured people along the shore line while others were screaming in panic; it was not easy differentiating between who had died and those still breathing” he explained.
This comes as part of several violent attacks carried out by Al-Shabaab in Mogadishu and across Somalia while their government is still fighting against these militants. In last month, five people died when car bomb exploded near a café in Mogadishu . And also three got killed and 27 injured during an hours-long siege by militants on a hotel last March.
