MOGADISHU, SOMALIA, OCT 13 -
A car bomb
exploded outside a popular cafe in Somalia's capital on Sunday,
killing 11 people and wounding eight others, a senior police official
said.
The blast struck the Aroma cafe in Mogadishu and the bomb was believed
to have been detonated by remote control, senior police official
Mohammed Hussein said. Most of those who died were sitting outside the
cafe, he said.
Somali soldiers sent to the scene fired in the air to disperse a
growing crowd that gathered amid shattered coffee glasses, and broken
tables and chairs. Medical workers transported the wounded into waiting
ambulances.
"What crime have these innocents committed?" said Liban Abdi, who survived the attack, which killed his friend.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion has
fallen on the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants who have vowed to
avenge the death of their leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, who was killed in
early September in a U.S. airstrike. Godane has been replaced by Ahmed
Omar, also known as Abu Ubeid.
Al-Shabab has continued to carry out attacks on Somalia's capital
despite being pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union forces supporting
Somalia's weak U.N.-backed government in August 2011. The Somali
government troops backed by AU forces are making progress in capturing
the remaining al-Shabab strongholds. Recently, they captured the port
town of Barawe.
Earlier Sunday, gunmen shot and seriously wounded a Somali television
reporter, officials said. The African Union Mission in Somalia, or
AMISOM, condemned the attack on the reporter, who was shot three times
while fleeing from the gunmen.
The Somali government said the attack on Abdirizak Jama, the director
of Somali Channel TV in Mogadishu, was an attempt to silence the media.
The attack was the third targeting journalists in Somalia this year,
AMISOM said. Somalia remains one of the most dangerous places in the
world to be a journalist. Last year, 18 journalists were killed in
Somalia.
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