Suicide attack in Mogadishu
Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu, has suffered many casualties from suicide bombs in recent months. Here a soldiers walks past debris on the streets of Mogadishu on Oct. 4, 2011, following a suicide attack.
A suicide bomber dressed in a government uniform blew himself up outside the defense ministry in Mogadishu this morning, killing at least four soldiers.
No claim of responsibility has yet been made, but in Somali history suicide attacks are the preserve of the Shabaab, the Islamist militants with Al Qaeda links who are battling the Transitional Federal Government and its African Union backers in the capital.
Attacks like this one — small, deadly, random — are not going to bring down the government or create the fundamentalist state the Shabaab wants, but as they increase in frequency they are maintaining levels of fear in Mogadishu more than three months after the Shabaab withdrew from the city under military pressure.
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