At least 10 individuals died on Sunday when a suicide bomber struck a queue of young volunteers enlisting at the Damanyo military base in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, witnesses and officials said. The attack was claimed by the al Shabaab militant group.
Eyewitnesses told of how a man in a tuk-tuk accelerated to the base gate, alighted, and blew up explosives within the crowd of teenagers gathered to enlist. Military captain Suleiman reported he witnessed around 10 deaths, both recruits and civilians, although the number of deaths could increase.
At the site, dozens of shoes left behind and fragments of the bomber were to be seen. Another eyewitness, Abdisalan Mohamed, described hundreds of young men at the gate mere minutes before the explosion, followed by a thick cloud of smoke obscuring what happened next.
The military hospital medical staff said 30 people were brought in with wounds from the blast, six of whom were killed outright. The area was immediately cordoned off by government troops to protect the site.
Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab said it carried out the attack, saying it had killed between 30 and 30 soldiers and injured 50 others. There has not been any response from Somali authorities to the militant group’s figures.
The al Shabaab insurgency has terrorized Somalia since 2007, with continuous attempts to extend its reach in central areas. Sunday’s attack is a repeat of a similar suicide bombing in 2023 at the adjacent Jale Siyad base, where 25 soldiers were killed.
The fatal attack came after Colonel Abdirahmaan Hujaale, the 26th battalion commander, was assassinated on Saturday in the Hiiran region. His killing came in the wake of alleged al Shabaab infiltration into government and security ranks.
