Al Shabaab militants attacked the president of Somalia Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in a bomb attack against his caravan while traveling through the capital Mogadiscio on Tuesday, the group said.
Two senior government and military officials said Reuters That Mohamud was sure after the attack, and the presidential advisor Zakariye Hussein wrote in an X publication that was “well and well on his way to the front lines.”
The soldiers and local residents who witnessed the attack confirmed that the president's convoy had been beaten. TO Reuters The journalist in the scene saw the bodies of four people killed in the assault near the presidential palace.
“Our combatants pointed to a convoy of vehicles transported Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as they left the presidential palace and were heading to the airport,” he told Shababaab in a statement published in the telegram channel of the group United to Al Qaeda.
While Shabaab regularly carries out attacks in Somalia as part of its decades campaign to overthrow the government, Tuesday's attack was the first to point directly to Mohamud since 2014, during their first term, when they bombed a hotel where I was talking.
Hours after Tuesday's attack, the state media showed images of the president in the Shabelle Middle Shabelle region of the Adan Yabal district of Somalia, where government forces are fighting an offensive of Al Shababaab of three weeks.
