MOGADISHU, Aug 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — At least 32 people have been killed and scores wounded following a suicide bombing and gun attack at a popular beach in the Somali capital Mogadishu, police said Saturday.
Police and witnesses said the bomber detonated his device late Friday along Lido Beach — popular with business people and officials and the scene of previous attacks — before gunmen stormed the area.
“More than 32 civilians died in this attack, and about 63 others were wounded, some of them critically,” police spokesman Abdifatah Adan Hassan told reporters, increasing the initial death toll from seven.
“There were wounded people as well but most of the civilians were rescued by the security forces,” he said, without giving further details.
“The security forces ended the siege and killed all the five gunmen Kharijites who have attacked innocent civilians who were spending time at the beach,” Omar said, using the term officials adopt to describe the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab jihadist group.
A sixth member of the group “blew himself at the beach”, he said.
Witnesses said there were many people at the popular location when the explosion occurred, describing how gunmen then stormed the area.
“Everybody was panicked and it was hard to know what was happening because shooting started soon after the blast,” witness Abdilatif Ali said.
He said that people attempted take cover on the ground or flee.
“I saw many people strewn (on the ground) and some of them were dead and others wounded,” he said.
Others described similar scenes, with Ahmed Yare witnessing the attack unfold from a nearby hotel.
“I saw wounded people at the beach side, people were screaming in panic, and it was hard to notice who was dead and who was still alive,” he said.
Al-Shabaab has carried out numerous bombings and attacks in Mogadishu and other parts of the country, as the government presses on with an offensive against the Islamist militants.
The latest attack comes after five people were killed in a powerful car bomb blast at a cafe in the capital last month.
In March, the militants killed three people and wounded 27 in an hours-long siege of a Mogadishu hotel, breaking a relative lull in the fighting.
Al-Shabaab has been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s fragile federal government for more than 17 years. — NNN-AGENCIES