A suicide bomber killed 14 people in a popular restaurant in the central Somalian town of Beledweyne on Saturday, on the eve of a round of a local election, police said.
The attack was claimed by the al-Shabaab militant group, which has been waging an insurgency in the troubled Horn of Africa nation for years.
Security had been tightened in Beledweyne ahead of a first session of voting for parliamentary seats in the constituency about 340km north of the capital, Mogadishu.
Photo: Reuters
“The number of people who have died in the heinous terrorist attack in Beledweyne today has increased from 10 people to 14 as of now,” local police officer Mohamud Hassan told Agence France-Presse by telephone.
Some of the 16 civilians earlier reported injured in the suicide bombing had died of their injuries in hospital, he said.
Among the dead were local government officials, Hassan added.
“This was the deadliest attack I can recall in this town,” he said.
Al-Shabaab said in a statement that one of its fighters carried out the bombing.
Somalia, particularly Mogadishu, has seen a spate of attacks in the past few weeks, as the country hobbles through a long-delayed election process.
Witnesses said the huge explosion tore through an open area of the Hassan Dhiif restaurant, where people had gathered under trees to eat lunch.
“I saw dead bodies of several people, and I could not count how many wounded that were rushed to hospital,” said one witness, Mahad Osman.
“Some of these people were waiting for their ordered meals to come while enjoying the fresh weather when the blast occurred,” Osman said. “I saw ... shoes, sticks and hats strewn at the scene of the blast, there was also blood and severed parts of human flesh.”
In another incident on Saturday, one person was killed and six injured when an explosive device went off in a teashop in Bosaso, the commercial capital of the northern state of Puntland, police said.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for that blast.
Somalia is due to wrap up voting for the lower house of parliament by Friday under the latest timetable for the elections, which are more than a year behind schedule.
Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known by his nickname Farmajo, has been at loggerheads with Somalian Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble over the election delays, an impasse that caused worries among Somalia’s international backers.
Among the candidates in Beledweyne is former Somalian intelligence head Farhad Yasin, who now advises Farmajo on national security.
Somalia’s voting process follows a complex indirect model, whereby state legislatures and clan delegates pick lawmakers for the national parliament, who in turn choose the president.
Voting for the upper house concluded last year, while clan delegates have so far elected 159 of the 275 lower house lawmakers.
Somalia’s international partners fear that the election crisis distracts from the battle against al-Shabaab.
Its fighters were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 after an African Union-led offensive, but it still controls vast swathes of rural Somalia, from where it launches regular attacks in the capital and elsewhere.
The US on Friday issued a statement calling on Somalia’s leaders to complete the elections in a “credible and transparent manner” by the scheduled deadline.
“The United States will hold accountable those who obstruct or undermine the process,” it said.
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US would restrict visas to those “believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic process in Somalia,” including current or former officials.
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