A suicide bomber killed at least four people and wounded five others in an attack on the home of Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Sunday, security officials said. Meanwhile, at least 12 Islamist fighters, including foreigners, were killed in US naval shelling and fighting with regional forces in Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland, officials said on Sunday. The Puntland government said its forces crushed the fighters in the hilly areas around the town of Bargal before a US Navy warship shelled the area. “Their bodies are lying in the mountains and we hope to show them to the media. They [Islamists] have lost the battle and we killed 12 of them,” said a Puntland military commander requesting anonymity.
Puntland Finance Minister Muhammad Ali Yusuf told reporters in the northern Somali town of Bosasso, “Our forces defeated the Islamist fighters consisting of Somali and foreign fighters. Most of them are dead now and some have fled the area. Our forces are fully in control of Bargal.”
| The terrorists were from America, Britain, Sweden, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen. |
There was no independent confirmation of the claims on the deaths of the foreigners, but terrified residents reported fatalities. Residents said at least 15 people were wounded when a US Navy destroyer on Friday fired on several targets in the mountainous terrain, where Al Qaeda operatives and Somali Islamists are believed to have bases. “The casualties could be far greater than we think. But so far we have been told that 15 people were injured in the attack,” Muhammad Gure, another resident in a village near Bargal told AFP. He said the injured were taken to Bosasso for treatment.
| A Somali jihadist group calling itself the Young Mujahideen Movement had earlier said it suffered no casualties in what it called “random” US air strikes and said it killed 11 soldiers. |
Meanwhile, on Sunday, Ethiopian forces killed a civilian and wounded two others after narrowly escaping a roadside bomb explosion, the latest in a string of attacks in the capital.