MOGADISHU: Two suicide bombers walked into a restaurant in central Mogadishu and killed at least 15 people on Thursday, police said, highlighting the security challenges facing the country’s new president.
Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents said Thursday that supporters of the extremist group had carried out the bombing.
"Action has been taken by sympathisers of the Shebab, who were angry with the situation in Somalia," militant spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told AFP. But the group had not directly ordered the attacks, he added.
The Al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for suicide bombings last week outside a hotel where President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was holding a news conference just two days into the job, an an attack interpreted as a warning from the insurgents that they are far from defeated.
Police spokesman General Abdullahi Barise told Reuters 15 people were killed in Thursday’s attack. A Reuters photographer saw several bodies, the severed heads of the two bombers and pools of blood on the floor.
The blasts targeted The Village restaurant, owned by well-known Somali businessman Ahmed Jama, who had returned to his home country from London to set up business against the advice of friends.
“My relatives, whom I created jobs for, have perished. My customers have perished. All innocent people. I cannot count them, their dead bodies are before me,” a distraught Jama told Reuters.
Three local journalists were among the dead, including the director of the state-run Somali National Television, the National Union of Somali Journalists said.
Suicide bombers kill 15 in Somali capital
Suicide bombers kill 15 in Somali capital
Maduro arrives in New York after capture by US
- The 63-year-old leader was to be taken first to the offices of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, then to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility in Brooklyn, according to US media
NEWBURGH, United States: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro arrived Saturday evening at a military base in the United States and was transferred to New York City, after his capture by US forces in Caracas.
FBI agents surrounded Maduro as he descended from a US government plane and slowly escorted him along the tarmac at a National Guard facility in New York state.
The leftist leader was then flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a large law enforcement contingent awaited, AFP images showed.
The 63-year-old leader was to be taken first to the offices of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, then to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility in Brooklyn, according to US media.
The detention center is the same jail where rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs was held throughout his trial last year.
Maduro and his wife are to be arraigned at an unspecified date before a judge in New York. They have been charged with “narco-terrorism,” importing tons of cocaine into the United States, and possession of illegal weapons.
