Somali troops narrowly averted a potentially devastating Shabaab suicide attack at the main seaport in Mogadishu today.
A Shabaab fighter hijacked a fuel tanker and forced the driver at gunpoint to ram the security checkpoint at the seaport, Reuters reported. Somali troops shot out the tires of the truck and fired into the cab as well, wounding the driver and suicide bomber.
The suicide bomber was found with a bag packed with explosives. A Somali police officer told Reuters that the Shabaab fighter clearly had tried to detonate the bomb at the seaport. The extent of damage the blast would have created is undetermined, as the fuel truck was empty.
The attack in Mogadishu is the second in three days by the al Qaeda-linked Shabaab against a vital installation protected by African Union and Somali forces. On Sept. 9, a five-man suicide assault team penetrated security at Mogadishu International Airport and came within 200 meters of the terminal. Five Shabaab fighters, two African Union troops, and three civilians were killed during the fighting.
The airport and seaport are among the handful of installations under the control of the weak Transitional Federal Government and African Union troops. These two facilities are the main conduits for aid and supplies to African Union and Somali forces.
The African Union has expected an attack on the seaport since early April. At that time, an African Union spokesman said intelligence indicated that Shabaab was “preparing trucks in the lower Shabelle region for suicide attacks” and that the terror group was also planning an attack from the sea.
Today’s attempted suicide assault is the third in Mogadishu in three weeks. In addition to the Sept. 9 attack at the airport, a Shabaab suicide assault team killed 28 people, including six members of parliament and five soldiers, in an attack on a hotel in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Aug. 23.
Shabaab has also carried out one suicide attack outside of Somalia’s borders this summer: the July 11 double suicide attack in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 74 people. The suicide cell that carried out the attack is called the Saleh ali Nabhan Brigade and is named after the al Qaeda leader who served as the military commander for Shabaab before being killed in a US special operations raid in September 2009.
Shabaab has carried out 24 major suicide attacks in Somalia since September 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union usurped control of the government (the Islamic Courts was ousted from power in an invasion by Ethiopian forces in December 2006). Several of the attacks have been carried out by American and British citizens who had left their home countries to join Shabaab.
