Al-Shabab targets school for terror attack in Somalia

Mogadishu, Nov 25 (AP): A large explosion outside a school in Somalia’s capital on Thursday killed at least eight people, including students, witnesses said. The extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.
The al-Qaida-linked group controls large parts of rural Somalia and continues to frustrate efforts at rebuilding the Horn of Africa nation after three decades of conflict.
The blast sent a plume of smoke above a busy part of Mogadishu during the rush hour. The blast shredded part of the school, with emergency workers looking through the collapsed roof beams and wooden benches.
Police spokesman Abdifatah Adam Hassan said eight people were killed and 17 others wounded.
This is a tragedy, said Abdulkadir Adan of the Amin ambulance service, which rushed people to a hospital.
The casualties were fewer than might have occurred since Thursday is part of the weekend in Somalia, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation.
Al-Shabab in a statement carried by its Andalus radio said it targeted Western officials being escorted by the African Union peacekeeping convoy. But a witness, Hassan Ali, told the AP that a private security company was escorting the officials and said he saw four of the security personnel wounded.
The attack occurred as Somalia faces major questions about its political and security future. The AU peacekeeping force was meant to withdraw from the country, but its mission could be extended amid concerns that Somali forces are not ready to assume responsibility for security.
The US early this year said its troop withdrawal from Somalia was complete. A long-delayed presidential vote was meant to take place in February but now looks set to be held next year. Al-Shabaab, which has been waging a violent insurgency against the country’s fragile government since 2007, said its fighters had long pursued the journalist. The militants also claimed two attacks in September that together killed 17 people.
A car bombing on September 25 near the presidential palace killed eight people, including the prime minister’s adviser for women and human rights, Hibaq Abukar.
Eleven days earlier, nine people, most of them members of Somalia’s security forces, died in a blast near a Mogadishu checkpoint. Al-Shabaab controlled the capital until 2011 when it was pushed out by AMISOM troops, but it still holds territory in the countryside and launches frequent attacks against government and civilian targets in Mogadishu and elsewhere.