At least six people have been killed in a bomb explosion in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.<\/p>\n
Islamist militant group al-Shabab said it carried out the attack, targeting the vehicle of a prominent former government official, who was killed.<\/p>\n
The number of attacks in Mogadishu has increased in recent months.<\/p>\n
Many have been blamed on al-Shabab, which has lost ground to government forces in recent years but still controls many southern rural areas.<\/p>\n
The blast took place near the city centre’s “Kilometre 4” district, close to the Turkish embassy.<\/p>\n
It was unclear whether the explosives had been attached to the vehicle or placed on the roadside and detonated by remote control.<\/p>\n
The official who died was named as Abdikafi Hilowle, a former secretary for the city’s administration.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab’s military spokesman, Abdiaziz Abu Musab, told news agencies that the al-Qaeda-linked group had carried out the attack.<\/p>\n
Policemen and civilians were among the dead, officials said.<\/p>\n
Somalia has been ravaged by constant warfare since 1991, when Siad Barre was ousted.<\/p>\n
In recent years, al-Shabab has been driven from most of the major city centres by government forces backed by an African Union mission.<\/p>\n
But the militants continue to launch regular attacks and bombings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least six people have been killed in a bomb explosion in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Islamist militant group al-Shabab said it carried out the attack, targeting the vehicle of a prominent former government official, who was killed. The number of attacks in Mogadishu has increased in recent months. Many have been blamed on al-Shabab, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":16267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-16266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}