Somalia’s al-Shabaab insurgents assassinated a lawmaker and his guards on Saturday, hours after US President Barack Obama said the al-Qaeda affiliated militants had been “weakened.”
Gunmen sprayed the car of Somalian member of parliament Abdulahi Hussein Mohamud with gunfire as he traveled through a southern district of the capital Mogadishu, killing him, his two guards and the driver.
Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud said he was “devastated” at the attack, the latest in a string of killings of Somalian lawmakers.
Photo: AFP
“The lawmaker was martyred while serving the nation, but such killings will not deter us from going forward,” Mohamoud told reporters late on Saturday.
Al-Shabaab said in a statement that its “mujahidin fighters targeted and killed a member of the parliament and his guards,” adding that they “will continue targeting” lawmakers.
Al-Shabaab have carried out repeated attacks, including a campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations targeting Somalian government figures.
UN envoy to Somalia Nicholas Kay called the murders a “despicable act.”
Witnesses said the militants fled after the attack.
“They opened fire on the car of the lawmaker and all of the passengers including him died,” witness Abdirahman Mire said.
Al-Shabaab is fighting to overthrow Somalia’s Western-backed government, which is propped up and protected by the 22,000-strong African Union force (AMISOM).
The attack came as Obama, on a visit to neighboring Kenya, praised AMISOM’s efforts, but said that while the insurgents had been “weakened,” the overall security threat posed by the group remained.
“We have been able to decrease their effective control within Somalia and have weakened those networks operating here in East Africa,” Obama said.
“That doesn’t mean the problem is solved,” he said.
“We can degrade significantly the capacity of the terrorist organizations, but they can still do damage,” he added.
Somalian government troops backed by African Union forces last week launched “Operation Jubba Corridor” — an offensive it said was aimed at flushing the insurgents out of rural areas in southern Somalia in an operation involving Ethiopian and Kenyan forces.
On Saturday, there were reports of helicopters — believed to be from Ethiopia — carrying out airstrikes targeting al-Shabaab fighters in the southern Bay region.
Government officials said the attacks had killed several al-Shabaab fighters, but residents said civilians had also been killed.
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